My advice would be to document your procedures, what you actually think needs to be done, and then take some time to distill them into a list. Then, following the list, does the procedure accomplish the task? If yes then move on to the next task.
My only revision would be have someone else try the checklist, you'd be amazed how much assumed knowledge the procedure writer doesn't think about.
Beyond that my procedures stuff is pretty high level, stating what is required and letting the operations folks implement it how they like.
The nitty gritty stuff I have had to write has been pretty specific i.e. DISA compliant CentOS box running Snort, and that's because the DISA and NSA docs for Linux aren't current to RHEL 5.2 and the guy who's Snort install doc we were using died.
However I am thinking a Wiki would be sufficient for most folks needs, I like Mediawiki, it was one of three packages that came with my webhost, and it has been easy to use.
I work on the teach a man to fish theory most of the time, and ask my analysts and other coworkers to come to me after Google not before. But as a rule of Thumb if you had to find the answer to a non trivial problem through Google it might be a good idea to copy and paste it into the internal wiki rather than rely on you remembering your search terms, you being at work, and your internet connection being up the next time it breaks.
I haven't read the other posts to see if its is mentioned, but Wideband has demonstrated their gear to offer Gigabit over Barb-wire lets see them chew the insulation off that.
I was kind of hoping that somebody would construct something like a space roomba that would attempt to match velocities with debris, and catch it using a Whipple Shield, Aerogel, or enourmous pieces of the type of foam Bigelow is using for their Habitats. The idea being that even if you didn't catch the debris as it blew through the shield, you'd decelerate it enough that its orbit would decay rapidly.
I was going for funny, but then I thought, if we did ionize the debris could some bright spark physicist type find a way to deflect the debris away from the ship with something magnetic like in an Ion engine?
Re:operation of the air traffic control system
on
FAA Network Hacked
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· Score: 1
80% of all security incidents are Insider Threat.
I assume most of those numbers are users deleting files, and bringing in virus infected media from home, but still its something to think about.
What protects your data from authorized users already inside your perimeter?
Being off-the-grid reduces drive by attacks from worms, but not dedicated attackers, or insiders.
Its about belief, some folks won't trust the model to simulate the production environment. Even if you make the VM or Ghost image right off of the real hardware, and put it onto another machine of the same model with the same specs, someone in the chain of command or legal will want to know if you tested the real thing.
And if it goes far enough, say after a data breach, leave it to a lawyer in court to ask if you on the stand, if tested the live system or some rigged demo designed to fool the auditors.
But in this case you'd be sending password hashes to Metasploit, they'd crack them and send them back in the clear.
I don't think I'd endorse that to a customer.
Secondly, there are some customers that don't have Internet access to their system, I don't know how useful the password cracking and opcode stuff would be unless you encrypt/export it and sent it to them via FTP.
Oddly enough I experienced the same sort of private club deal in Raleigh NC. I was down there to take a cert test, and visit a friend.
I don't recall having to swipe my ID though. The private club wasn't a sign up at the door deal, you had to sign up via their website.
According to John, my guide through Raleigh, there were also regulations saying you couldn't serve food and alcohol, or some percentage of food to alcohol to be a restaurant vs. club.
Since his main claim seems to be on wiretapping I do believe you're right. If he were right it would have to go down more like this;
BOGUS THEORY: "The conspiracy theorists are right" and the NSA really IS after a ghetto patchwork version of Total Information Awareness, thus his implications that all banks and companies with big databases on people should be asked to testify before congress.
This supposes he worked on the database side, and only knew as much about the wiretapping as he read in the papers. END THEORY
What is more likely is he knew something about the wiretapping program or parrots what he reads, and found the TIA stuff on some conspiracy theorist blog somewhere.
For those who don't know what I'm talking about, I think I read it on/. first, its the idea that the government wanted information on everybody under the name Total Information Awareness, but couldn't buy it, or collect it due to the Privacy Act. The theory is that all the data breaches we see now are conducted directly or indirectly on behalf of secret agencies and they get their information that way. Or that the breaches are conducted for criminal reasons, but when the hackers get caught extra copies of the data get sent to the secret agencies.
Detractors of the theory say that if that many people knew about it, somebody would have said something by now.
I have a 10 Megapixel Canon DSLR, not the top end one, the one right below that. It has all of the settings you mention available through menus. A friend of mine owns the top of the line model in the 8 megapixel version. That version has all of the knobs for changing all of the settings without going into the menu. He showed me what all of my menu options do, but I never use them, the camera takes much better pictures than I ever could. I just point the camera at interesting subject matter and take 2-3 snaps to compensate for my hand shaking, or the wind, or me breathing. There will almost always be a really great shot amongst the ones I took.
Take these pictures from Anime Expo 2007, seventh and eighth ones from the bottom of the page, I took nearly 30 pictures of this cosplay group while standing behind 75 other people, holding my camera above me at arms length and spamming the button.
I have a 2GB CF card I use most of the time, and I throw away a lot of stuff, but I have more shots that I like using digital than I did with traditional film. I think eventually the batteries won't be able to keep up if I get an 8GB card.
I tried to do some photosynth galleries, but found out I wasn't taking -enough- pictures. So now I will have to get the 8GB card before my next outing.
The problem is that your MinMaxers typically look for odd corner cases where multiple rules add up to more than average results. They also exploit Grey Areas where rules are under defined. This gives a decided edge to the MinMaxer over the other players, now while you're all working together a Win for one person should be a Win for the Team, it is not in fact a Win.
The MinMaxer succeeds more often, does more, enjoys more (maybe) at the expense of other players fun.
To take D&D for an example, I have a character that for a while exploited the Spiked Chain a weapon with a Long Reach that can Trip targets and get a free attack the target tries to stand up again. I got this trick from a GM complaining in a Forum about 2 Chain users in his group meat grinding everything he threw at them. Because of the reach of the chains, the opponents never got into melee range to do any damage. So at this point it is an impervious and one sided situation for the MinMaxers.
They may or may not have had Combat Reflexes to allow them to take multiple free attacks on Targets coming into their range, or getting up from trips.
So I combine this Chain + Combat Reflexes + Protection from Arrows (no stand off engagements forced enemies into my well defined corner case) I combined this with a High Dexterity (more free attacks) and Three Attack Dogs trained to Attack and Trip opponents on command. This gave me more opportunities to use the Free attacks on Tripped Opponents that stood up, in addition to any incidental damage the Dogs actually did with their attacks.
Now take ANY other character in the party that is designed for melee combat, and ask him why he bothered to show up. At first level he'd get 1 attack, I could have up to 8 (1 Normal, 4 AoOs, 3 Dogs)
The Dogs exploited a Grey area in the rules, nowhere does it say how many Dogs you can say Attack to in one round, its left to GM discretion. The GM for the most part will try his best not to screw his players out of legitimate uses of their abilities while not letting his game run away from him.
I do crowd control nowadays while the real melee characters kill bosses. Everybody in their niche, its more fun for everybody, and shows that we work as a team, not just one guy trying to be a superstar.
Robin Laws has a good section in his book on Game mastering on figuring out what your players want and giving it to them. This was also figured out long ago for MUDs how some players like to be PvP or PvE long before MMOs came on the scene.
Needless to say no player 'wants' to sit around and watch other people having fun, while feeling impotent and ineffective.
The other problem with MinMaxers is that in their search for corner cases, they will search every book for crunchy bits to exploit. This tilts the game in favor of people with no life and or lots of money to buy source books over casual or thrifty gamers.
This goes against a principle of fair play in RPGs that says anyone CAN has the same choices and same chances to succeed or fail. Everything else should be the luck of the dice.
Creative players should be rewarded, other players will talk forever about some cool idea one of their buddies had, not what esoteric combo of rules he used to unhinge the game.
I have two Majel memories from when I met Majel briefly at a con in Dallas in the 90's. An acquaintance had gone to the con dressed up as an Orion slave chick, and we all went to see Majel announce who won the costume competition. She said she was envious of the girl's green makeup, and that they had used green paint on TOS. Majel being on contract was used for the original screen test to get the colors right before they used them on the guest star. Unfortunately every time they got the film back she looked normal, so they tried a darker green, and went back and forth with the guys who developed the film. Eventually it came out that they were color correcting her, finally they said "oh you wanted her to be green" and the color worked fine from then on.
As for meeting her briefly, someone had put a petition in my hands to get more Lwaxana Troi episodes on the show, I had it for about five minutes and hadn't gotten anyone to sign. I finished talking with someone about something and turned around to see Majel standing behind me. I didn't know what else to say so I told her what the petition was for, and asked her if she'd sign. She politely decline "they probably wouldn't take it very seriously if I signed it."
Re:You shouldn't trust voting/recommendation syste
on
Censorship By Glut
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· Score: 1
D'oh
Re:You shouldn't trust voting/recommendation syste
on
Censorship By Glut
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· Score: 1
Why?
I have in my own post about recommendation systems mentioned something I read about a system that is resistant to gaming. can't remember the URL though.
Is gaming of the systems why you don't trust these systems? Your comment isn't really a comment, I could just as easily say "don't trust Tom" without some reasoning, I don't think most folks would listen to me.
Are voting systems in your experience all sock puppets and popularity contests?
Had you provided me a reason I might have modded you up.
Reputation + Recommendations
on
Censorship By Glut
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Excuse me if this seems to ramble.
I once read an article about Rating systems, ones that were resistant to gaming the system, unlike eBay's rating system. The system in questions rated things positively that you rated highly and negatively those that you didn't. Over time it tended to only show you things that were rated highly by people who rated things similarly to you.
This leads to clustering of people with similar viewpoints, but lessens the effect of sockpuppets, trolls and griefers. They would have to be rated positively by enough people consistently in the same cluster to game the system.
I wasn't looking at this for something like eBay, but rather an MMO. I also wonder sometimes about a Firefox plugin, but I digress.
I'd like to further refine this system based on my experience with Amazon's recommendations. I and some of my friends have noticed if we buy a very new or niche publication we will get wierd and uneven recommendations off that purchase until enough people buy the book to smooth out the recommendations.
Unfortunately Amazon only has "I own this" and "not interested" as responses. It doesn't have enough dimensions, and doesn't factor in reviews at all. I buy one video in a series, and I get recommendations for that series, and other series that are similar. When I say I am not interested in that other series episodes, say season 1 I still get recommendations for the rest of the series. I would like to be able to 'deny all' but I can't. If I wanted to tell it not to recommend horror movies, I can't.
Likewise if I saw something online I didn't want to read, and I consistently didn't like, I'd filter it, not one blog post, but the author.
Ok, so here I am ideally, rating things and filtering things, until I am at last, as the parent writes in my own "world" suddenly CNN, BBC, and Joe blogger have an equal voice because they are narrowcasting straight to my own little insular 'bubble' on the internet.
To which I'd like to add we need more control, and more dimensions on this filtering thing if it's really supposed to work. I'd love to mod up stories 'Thought-Provoking', or 'I want my 5 minutes back'.
I think there is an answer out there, and I think it has something to do with self-organizing systems.
Slashdot Mirror
My advice would be to document your procedures, what you actually think needs to be done, and then take some time to distill them into a list. Then, following the list, does the procedure accomplish the task? If yes then move on to the next task.
My only revision would be have someone else try the checklist, you'd be amazed how much assumed knowledge the procedure writer doesn't think about.
I used to be in the troubleshoot everything camp, now I am firmly in the copy the user's crap and re-image camp.
I also found this PC boot failure flowchart to be of immense help.
http://www.fonerbooks.com/poster.pdf
Beyond that my procedures stuff is pretty high level, stating what is required and letting the operations folks implement it how they like.
The nitty gritty stuff I have had to write has been pretty specific i.e. DISA compliant CentOS box running Snort, and that's because the DISA and NSA docs for Linux aren't current to RHEL 5.2 and the guy who's Snort install doc we were using died.
http://www.internetsecurityguru.com/
However I am thinking a Wiki would be sufficient for most folks needs, I like Mediawiki, it was one of three packages that came with my webhost, and it has been easy to use.
I work on the teach a man to fish theory most of the time, and ask my analysts and other coworkers to come to me after Google not before. But as a rule of Thumb if you had to find the answer to a non trivial problem through Google it might be a good idea to copy and paste it into the internal wiki rather than rely on you remembering your search terms, you being at work, and your internet connection being up the next time it breaks.
Funny,
When I said this last week after the satellite collision, I didn't get modded at all.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1124697&cid=26830543
Oh well, the idea is out there, it somebody actually implements it, that will be more gratifying than mod points.
I wonder how much MS Partner Software will be there, there are lots of companies that have no retail presence of their own, but sell Office Add-ons.
Also they could easily fill the rest of the store with Xbox consoles and Video Games.
Keep two Xbox 360s up playing new titles, and a Surface for demonstrations and the store would get decent foot traffic.
Put in a couple of models of Laptops and PCs made by select OEMs and you'd have enough stuff to justify a store.
I'd say your empathy is too broken to be the same as 99% of the humans. You're different. When can we start experimenting on _you_ then?
Well obviously it meets all of HIS ethical standards.
Dude, you aren't thinking big enough.
Reality Show
Send him or her to school, for all we know your neanderclone could come up with a cure for cancer.
I haven't read the other posts to see if its is mentioned, but Wideband has demonstrated their gear to offer Gigabit over Barb-wire lets see them chew the insulation off that.
https://www.wband.com/Products/mAcrobat/WBproductflyer.pdf
You do realize that this will only effect hybrid or electric cars right?
Given the specific mention of military hummers, which are most certainly NOT hybrids or electic,
Well not now, but they were trying to come up with a Hybrid Humvee.
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/000877.html
I was kind of hoping that somebody would construct something like a space roomba that would attempt to match velocities with debris, and catch it using a Whipple Shield, Aerogel, or enourmous pieces of the type of foam Bigelow is using for their Habitats. The idea being that even if you didn't catch the debris as it blew through the shield, you'd decelerate it enough that its orbit would decay rapidly.
So we'll be flying through Ionized debris then?
I was going for funny, but then I thought, if we did ionize the debris could some bright spark physicist type find a way to deflect the debris away from the ship with something magnetic like in an Ion engine?
80% of all security incidents are Insider Threat.
I assume most of those numbers are users deleting files, and bringing in virus infected media from home, but still its something to think about.
What protects your data from authorized users already inside your perimeter?
Being off-the-grid reduces drive by attacks from worms, but not dedicated attackers, or insiders.
Not until they start caring about producing goods with stolen design elements in them.
Its about belief, some folks won't trust the model to simulate the production environment. Even if you make the VM or Ghost image right off of the real hardware, and put it onto another machine of the same model with the same specs, someone in the chain of command or legal will want to know if you tested the real thing.
And if it goes far enough, say after a data breach, leave it to a lawyer in court to ask if you on the stand, if tested the live system or some rigged demo designed to fool the auditors.
But in this case you'd be sending password hashes to Metasploit, they'd crack them and send them back in the clear.
I don't think I'd endorse that to a customer.
Secondly, there are some customers that don't have Internet access to their system, I don't know how useful the password cracking and opcode stuff would be unless you encrypt/export it and sent it to them via FTP.
If that doesn't happen, and you ever get in a case where it's applicable, get a good lawyer that will ask the Judge to throw them out.
And keep throwing them out until you get one with no conflict of interest.
Oddly enough I experienced the same sort of private club deal in Raleigh NC. I was down there to take a cert test, and visit a friend.
I don't recall having to swipe my ID though.
The private club wasn't a sign up at the door deal, you had to sign up via their website.
According to John, my guide through Raleigh, there were also regulations saying you couldn't serve food and alcohol, or some percentage of food to alcohol to be a restaurant vs. club.
In TFS it states the 25K course is the 9 week one, not the sponsored 3 and 10 day ones.
Since his main claim seems to be on wiretapping I do believe you're right. If he were right it would have to go down more like this;
BOGUS THEORY: "The conspiracy theorists are right" and the NSA really IS after a ghetto patchwork version of Total Information Awareness, thus his implications that all banks and companies with big databases on people should be asked to testify before congress.
This supposes he worked on the database side, and only knew as much about the wiretapping as he read in the papers. END THEORY
What is more likely is he knew something about the wiretapping program or parrots what he reads, and found the TIA stuff on some conspiracy theorist blog somewhere.
For those who don't know what I'm talking about, I think I read it on /. first, its the idea that the government wanted information on everybody under the name Total Information Awareness, but couldn't buy it, or collect it due to the Privacy Act. The theory is that all the data breaches we see now are conducted directly or indirectly on behalf of secret agencies and they get their information that way. Or that the breaches are conducted for criminal reasons, but when the hackers get caught extra copies of the data get sent to the secret agencies.
Detractors of the theory say that if that many people knew about it, somebody would have said something by now.
Um, have you watched the opening recently
Since about a half season back, maybe with the cylon rebels splitting off from the rest, the Cylons have not had a plan.
I have a 10 Megapixel Canon DSLR, not the top end one, the one right below that. It has all of the settings you mention available through menus. A friend of mine owns the top of the line model in the 8 megapixel version. That version has all of the knobs for changing all of the settings without going into the menu. He showed me what all of my menu options do, but I never use them, the camera takes much better pictures than I ever could. I just point the camera at interesting subject matter and take 2-3 snaps to compensate for my hand shaking, or the wind, or me breathing. There will almost always be a really great shot amongst the ones I took.
Take these pictures from Anime Expo 2007, seventh and eighth ones from the bottom of the page, I took nearly 30 pictures of this cosplay group while standing behind 75 other people, holding my camera above me at arms length and spamming the button.
http://www.evilrobotgames.com/Expo2.html
I have a 2GB CF card I use most of the time, and I throw away a lot of stuff, but I have more shots that I like using digital than I did with traditional film. I think eventually the batteries won't be able to keep up if I get an 8GB card.
I tried to do some photosynth galleries, but found out I wasn't taking -enough- pictures. So now I will have to get the 8GB card before my next outing.
The problem is that your MinMaxers typically look for odd corner cases where multiple rules add up to more than average results. They also exploit Grey Areas where rules are under defined. This gives a decided edge to the MinMaxer over the other players, now while you're all working together a Win for one person should be a Win for the Team, it is not in fact a Win.
The MinMaxer succeeds more often, does more, enjoys more (maybe) at the expense of other players fun.
To take D&D for an example, I have a character that for a while exploited the Spiked Chain a weapon with a Long Reach that can Trip targets and get a free attack the target tries to stand up again. I got this trick from a GM complaining in a Forum about 2 Chain users in his group meat grinding everything he threw at them. Because of the reach of the chains, the opponents never got into melee range to do any damage. So at this point it is an impervious and one sided situation for the MinMaxers.
They may or may not have had Combat Reflexes to allow them to take multiple free attacks on Targets coming into their range, or getting up from trips.
So I combine this Chain + Combat Reflexes + Protection from Arrows (no stand off engagements forced enemies into my well defined corner case) I combined this with a High Dexterity (more free attacks) and Three Attack Dogs trained to Attack and Trip opponents on command. This gave me more opportunities to use the Free attacks on Tripped Opponents that stood up, in addition to any incidental damage the Dogs actually did with their attacks.
Now take ANY other character in the party that is designed for melee combat, and ask him why he bothered to show up. At first level he'd get 1 attack, I could have up to 8 (1 Normal, 4 AoOs, 3 Dogs)
The Dogs exploited a Grey area in the rules, nowhere does it say how many Dogs you can say Attack to in one round, its left to GM discretion. The GM for the most part will try his best not to screw his players out of legitimate uses of their abilities while not letting his game run away from him.
I do crowd control nowadays while the real melee characters kill bosses. Everybody in their niche, its more fun for everybody, and shows that we work as a team, not just one guy trying to be a superstar.
Robin Laws has a good section in his book on Game mastering on figuring out what your players want and giving it to them. This was also figured out long ago for MUDs how some players like to be PvP or PvE long before MMOs came on the scene.
Needless to say no player 'wants' to sit around and watch other people having fun, while feeling impotent and ineffective.
The other problem with MinMaxers is that in their search for corner cases, they will search every book for crunchy bits to exploit. This tilts the game in favor of people with no life and or lots of money to buy source books over casual or thrifty gamers.
This goes against a principle of fair play in RPGs that says anyone CAN has the same choices and same chances to succeed or fail. Everything else should be the luck of the dice.
Creative players should be rewarded, other players will talk forever about some cool idea one of their buddies had, not what esoteric combo of rules he used to unhinge the game.
I think that's all I can say on this.
I have two Majel memories from when I met Majel briefly at a con in Dallas in the 90's. An acquaintance had gone to the con dressed up as an Orion slave chick, and we all went to see Majel announce who won the costume competition. She said she was envious of the girl's green makeup, and that they had used green paint on TOS. Majel being on contract was used for the original screen test to get the colors right before they used them on the guest star. Unfortunately every time they got the film back she looked normal, so they tried a darker green, and went back and forth with the guys who developed the film. Eventually it came out that they were color correcting her, finally they said "oh you wanted her to be green" and the color worked fine from then on.
As for meeting her briefly, someone had put a petition in my hands to get more Lwaxana Troi episodes on the show, I had it for about five minutes and hadn't gotten anyone to sign. I finished talking with someone about something and turned around to see Majel standing behind me. I didn't know what else to say so I told her what the petition was for, and asked her if she'd sign. She politely decline "they probably wouldn't take it very seriously if I signed it."
D'oh
Why?
I have in my own post about recommendation systems mentioned something I read about a system that is resistant to gaming. can't remember the URL though.
Is gaming of the systems why you don't trust these systems? Your comment isn't really a comment, I could just as easily say "don't trust Tom" without some reasoning, I don't think most folks would listen to me.
Are voting systems in your experience all sock puppets and popularity contests?
Had you provided me a reason I might have modded you up.
Excuse me if this seems to ramble.
I once read an article about Rating systems, ones that were resistant to gaming the system, unlike eBay's rating system. The system in questions rated things positively that you rated highly and negatively those that you didn't. Over time it tended to only show you things that were rated highly by people who rated things similarly to you.
This leads to clustering of people with similar viewpoints, but lessens the effect of sockpuppets, trolls and griefers. They would have to be rated positively by enough people consistently in the same cluster to game the system.
I wasn't looking at this for something like eBay, but rather an MMO. I also wonder sometimes about a Firefox plugin, but I digress.
I'd like to further refine this system based on my experience with Amazon's recommendations. I and some of my friends have noticed if we buy a very new or niche publication we will get wierd and uneven recommendations off that purchase until enough people buy the book to smooth out the recommendations.
Unfortunately Amazon only has "I own this" and "not interested" as responses. It doesn't have enough dimensions, and doesn't factor in reviews at all. I buy one video in a series, and I get recommendations for that series, and other series that are similar. When I say I am not interested in that other series episodes, say season 1 I still get recommendations for the rest of the series. I would like to be able to 'deny all' but I can't. If I wanted to tell it not to recommend horror movies, I can't.
Likewise if I saw something online I didn't want to read, and I consistently didn't like, I'd filter it, not one blog post, but the author.
Ok, so here I am ideally, rating things and filtering things, until I am at last, as the parent writes in my own "world" suddenly CNN, BBC, and Joe blogger have an equal voice because they are narrowcasting straight to my own little insular 'bubble' on the internet.
To which I'd like to add we need more control, and more dimensions on this filtering thing if it's really supposed to work. I'd love to mod up stories 'Thought-Provoking', or 'I want my 5 minutes back'.
I think there is an answer out there, and I think it has something to do with self-organizing systems.