1) An administrator account with a long but easy-to-read-over-the-phone password (a la https://xkcd.com/936/ correct-horse-battery-staple). This account has one big Teamviewer button on the desktop and nothing else. I encourage them not to write down this password.
2) A "mom" account with an easy password.
3) Hide the IE button
4) Chrome installed as "mom" so that it updates itself. Chrome also updates its built-in flash and pdf viewer, so that's two fewer things to worry about.
5) Microsoft Security Essentials with scheduled scans and updates. Other AV might be better, but it expires. MSE doesn't.
6) An external disk with automatic backups so that when something inevitably does go wrong, we have a way back.
Those support tasks don't exactly push hardware to its limit, and most of those tasks are the kind of thing that demands a bunch of redundant servers anyway.
Throw a bunch of "last generation" hardware at the task -- stuff from the "asset reclamation" pile. Leave a few more around as spares. Less disposal paperwork. Works just fine. By the time your last spare fails, you'll have a new generation of obsolete hardware.
I've done a little bit of environment taming in my day.
Everybody's already told you the "right" things to do. They're all right. Thing is, you need to get there somehow, and you're looking for a path from here to there. At least, I think that's what you're asking.
You already have bazaar. Good tool. Don't worry about bzr versus cvs versus hg right now. You picked something. Run with it.
I suggest a quick shell script that replaces your editor with "edit; check-in; offer to push". Create another quick script (call it "oops") that asks you whether you need a local or global revert, then issues the relevant commands. Push those scripts to all machines (maybe as their own bzr project). Now, you basically have the same process with a much larger safety net. This isn't software that's being released to the world. Don't worry about version numbers or branching. If you EVER have to change a file, throw it into version control.
Now, you can start to synchronize your scripts. With an environment that wild, you probably have a script that's almost-but-not-quite the same running on a bunch of machines. Maybe there's a hard-coded hostname or directory or something. Come up with a version that's more universal (Use big "if hostname = foo" blocks if you have to), and get that new universal script added to a project and pushed to all machines. Once they're all using it, you can slowly clean it up.
Cool. You have unified scripts. Now let's talk about those configuration files. I'll bet that they're also 99% identical across all of your machines. Get them all into the same project (call them config-machine1, config-machine2, etc.). Get them as identical as possible. Now, think about how you might handle differences. For a quick fix, I like the "magic comment" ("## BEGIN foo.sh MANAGED SECTION" and "## END foo.sh SECTION") and a perl script that looks for those strings. m4 also works well, and isn't too hard to learn.
"Okay, smart guy. I have all of the common config scripts, but I have a bunch of single-purpose machines and scripts, too!" Yup. Awesome. Get them into version control, too. You never know when that machine's going to suddenly die or your boss will break out in a fit of generousity and get you that second server for load balancing. (Hey! It could happen.) When it does, setup will be a lot easier if you have all of the config files in a project.
At this point in the game, you'll be pretty comfortable with version control. You'll have been burned once or twice, and it'll have saved your butt a few times. You'll have some experience, and you'll be kicking yourself for the way that you first set it up. Now's the time to revisit those decisions. Is it time to split up some projects or roll some together? Maybe git or hg might make more sense. Maybe you hate your life and your coworkers so much that you want to go to Perforce, ClearCase, or some other commercial software. You'll have the experience to design it right.
A lot of my biggest concerns have been addressed by others. A few things that I haven't seen covered:
The "30 second boot time" limit makes me assume that there is something time-sensitive about this data collection. (Otherwise, why would you be wasting time on it?) So, you need a fast boot, but then you're mucking around with Samba and union mounts, which are both relatively slow. This doesn't make any sense. This is why people are asking questions or making up odd scenarios in their answers.
The odd scenario that I'm assuming is that you have more drives than sleds, so you need to go through a few load-boot-read-shutdown-unload cycles to get all of your data OR the machine's being "borrowed" to read the data, so you need to bring it up with an alternate OS quickly so that you can work through the night before returning it to normal use in the morning.
If that's the case, it really sounds like (as someone else suggested) that you need to separate the collector from the persistent storage. Set up something that can read the data from all of your "dynamic" drives as fast as possible. Depending on the data, something like rsync or even netcat might be the fastest way to get data off of the machine.
In the US, there are two major "flavors" of cellphone technology: GSM (also used in Europe) and CDMA (also used in some parts of Asia). There are four major carriers: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile. There are also some (very good) regional carriers and a whole bunch of companies who re-sell from the big 4.
CDMA providers (in the US, Verizon and Sprint are the two big ones) don't have removable SIM cards, and they're not particularly friendly or helpful about unlocking existing phones. Verizon has, by far, the best coverage for the more rural parts of the US. So, if you're going to be out in the sticks, you might be stuck buying a shitty Verizon phone.
GSM providers WILL sell you a SIM, just like you're looking for, but they don't talk about it, and they don't offer any sort of commission to their store employees for it, so they won't offer it unless you ask. You walk in and buy a pre-paid SIM card, just like in Europe. The data prices suck if you don't get a data package (AT&T charges $2/MEGAbyte without a plan (or $2048/GB), but you can get $2/day unlimited data or pay $25 for a 1GB block of data), but you can get "Unlimited daily" plans for a few dollars per day. AT&T has better coverage than T-Mobile, but both are usually adequate in bigger cities. Neither's quite as good as Verizon in rural areas, but I've had better luck with AT&T than with T-Mobile.
That's $1175 (at $47/disk) to back up 2.5TB of data. Or, about $4000 and a whole lot of free time to back up the photos he already has, plus $20 per shoot.
It's a cool option, but not exactly an inexpensive one.
I'd like to see a law that stipulates that any store that offers products in plastic clamshell packaging MUST be willing to open all of the packages in the checkout line (no "go wait in a separate customer service line after paying") at no extra charge. Those packages would be gone within a year.
Right now, clamshell packaging is a huge win for the store, but all of the customer frustration is an externality. By forcing the stores to deal with the externality, we align store interests with consumer interests.
There is one thing worse than a bad password, and that is one that needs to be written down on a post-it note.
Whether that's true depends, to a great degree, on the environment and the threats that you're defending against.
I work in a secure, guarded building and have to swipe a card just to get to my desk. The odds that anyone else will EVER see me type a password are small. If I write down all of my passwords on a piece of paper that's kept in a locked desk drawer, the risk to the organization is minimal. There's no harm in forcing me to have an absurdly long password that's changed often, as I don't NEED to remember it.
On the other hand, a front-desk secretary doesn't have a private space. We need to ensure that his/her password is easy to remember and rarely changed so that the secretary is NEVER tempted to write it down.
(Personally, I use Keyring for PalmOS. You need to have the device and you need to know my keyring password to get anything else.)
First, don't forget physical security. Assume that someone WILL attempt to steal your netbook. Keep it in sight or locked up. Encrypt as much as you can (whole hard drive if at all possible). Make backups, even if that's just "webmail and flickr/picasa", to keep data loss to a minimum.
That said, I'd keep it simple. Get everything for your online banking set up before you go. Take a look at the certificates. Don't worry too much, but just know whether your bank's certificate has the name of your bank or the name of some parent company. Really, you want to know if something changes later.
Seriously consider two browsers: one for "safe" targeted work (checking bank balance, for example) and one for "browsing". Personally, I'd use Firefox for the safe stuff and Opera for everything else. The Opera Turbo http://www.opera.com/browser/turbo/ feature is really nice for slow or flaky connections.
Like most people, I have a small amount of truly irreplaceable content (documents, pictures) and a whole bunch of "it'd be annoying if I lost that" content (music, movies). One of the really convenient things about this split: the truly irreplaceable stuff is not very large. My docs and pictures occupy about 15 GB, and most of that is pictures.
I have an external hard drive where I back up everything at least nightly. This protects me from accidental deletions and a failed hard drive. It doesn't protect against fire or theft, though.
Services like Mozy and Carbonite offer off-site backup for about $5/month (there are many others -- these are the two best known, I think). I could string together something with a spare drive and a friend, but frankly, it would take a year or two before that approach matched the cost of Mozy et al., and frankly, I just don't WANT to worry about this crap. I'll pay the $60/year to make it someone else's problem.
One interesting option: Crash Plan at http://www4.crashplan.com/consumer/index.html . They offer free backups to friends' machines, and paid backups to their own fileservers. Sounds like the best of both worlds, but I haven't gotten around to trying it yet.
What browsers and operating systems are supported for webmail? Keep in mind that even if the university has a standard browser, people will be accessing their mail from elsewhere (home, conferences, etc.). Saying "Just use IE" is not acceptable.
Is there a way to access mail using encrypted POP or IMAP. POP or IMAP is essential because college users are incredibly mobile. Constant connectivity cannot be assumed. On a related note, how do users check mail from cell phones?
When users access mail from a browser, is there decent security? Are the certificates properly signed?
Is there a way to offer integrated authentication so that users can sign on using their university ID and password?
I'm not sure that it's an eye defect. I think the "problem" is that humans are remarkably adaptable.
When I was younger, I had a cheap record and cassette player. It sounded fine. I had a friend with more money who had a nice stereo with a CD player. When I first visited, I could sort-of tell the difference, but it wasn't a big deal. After visiting his place regularly, my ears became accustomed to the higher quality. My own stereo started to sound worse and worse.
There was a time when everyone had VCRs. The quality was fine. Yeah, that over-used tape from the video place might crackle a little bit, but you could still tell what was going on, and it usually looked better than television. Everybody thought that the only advantage to DVDs was their disk shape. No more rewinding! As time passed, we all ended up with DVD players and became accustomed to that level of video quality. Have you watched a videotape in the last year or two? It's kind of painful, really. It's on par with Youtube.
I suspect that the same thing will happen with Blu-Ray. We'll slowly upgrade our TVs and players as the current ones die. We'll buy the Blu-Ray version of the movie because, hey, we already have the player. No need to upgrade existing movies because they still look fine. Eventually, the majority of people's collections will be Blu-Ray. We'll adjust to that level of picture quality. We'll pop in the DVD version of a movie, and it'll look just AWFUL on the 90" set that we watch from a few feet away.
I would appreciate even a link on how to underclock a CPU on OpenBSD.
OS is irrelevant. When the machine starts, you need to go into the BIOS. That probably means pressing F1 or Del. Somewhere in there will be speed settings (maybe "clock" and "multiplier" with that age of machine). Write down the original settings. Then, start dropping the speed. If you have "clock" and "multiplier", drop multiplier first. Drop a little bit, save, reboot. Make sure the OS still works. If it does, drop another notch. Repeat until you run out of settings, it's too slow for its intended purpose, or it starts to feel like Windows Vista.
If you go too far, either try rebooting (some machines will always boot into the BIOS at a safe speed), or open up the case and take out the little battery overnight. When you put it back, the BIOS should reset to something useable.
The rfc is broken, as it assumes no one would lie in their 'MAIL FROM' field.
butbutbut... I thought that RFCs were writs directly from God. They are INFALLIBLE, I tell you! That is why they are never considered obsolete. EVER! Only heretics dare say otherwise.
I think it's important to realize that voting machines are so insecure that preventing fraud entirely is impossible. That said,
1) Ensure that the machines are physically safe before the election. Don't leave them in an insecure area between the time that you check them to ensure that the counts are at zero (and DO check that) and the time that voting begins. Allow nobody near the machines without both ID and a witness at all times, including yourself (you don't want to be accused of anything), ESPECIALLY if they claim to work for the company that makes the machines. In fact, if anyone you don't know shows up to work on the machines, get approval from as far up the chain of command as can be managed and WRITE DOWN the name, time, etc. if it happens. Consider some sort of tamper-evident seal for the area where the machines are stored (your local trucking company can provide you with a handful of the ones that they use on freight trailers).
2) Watch for voters who are holding either memory cards or keys. The best-publicized ways of messing with a machine involve unlocking the machine and/or inserting a card with altered data. Keep in mind that the memory cards can be a lot smaller than those giant plastic cases around some of the official cards. Also keep in mind that if you see this, it might just be somebody with a spare memory card for their camera and a set of car keys.
3) After the polls close, physical access becomes a big deal again. Don't allow anyone near the machines or cards without ID and a witness, including yourself. Ensure that the machines are locked away, and find out who has a copy of the key to the room/closet/truck/whatever.
At a previous job, I had to spend some time processing the DMCA notices. They were obviously auto-generated, and it was pretty common for them to just not make sense. IP address but no timestamp (very handy for dynamic address ranges), indecipherable protocol in the url (really. When even Google's no help, you need to at least provide a -hint-.), etc. When I'd respond with simple questions, it would take them weeks to respond. Meanwhile, they expected people to jump on their requests within hours.
The issue was with old, pre-CDMA cell phones and extremely old avionics, like those found in small and mid-sized non-comercial aircraft about 40 years ago.
Some of which are still flying. The rule is there because nobody can ensure that the airplane you're on and every other nearby plane at the airport are safe.
Also, not a single one of those old phones that DID cause the interference is in use today since those old networks were dismantled years ago.
For values of years ago that include two months ago. There were people using those networks up until the last day, too. In the more rural parts of the country, an old analog phone was often more useful than a newer phone.
What other online booksellers are out there? Particularly booksellers that deal with POD?
If Amazon's being evil, I'm willing to take my business elsewhere.
If Amazon's the only online bookseller who's willing to touch this stuff, then perhaps it's time for the POD industry to stop and take a long, hard look at itself.
I really don't know which is true. The article is terribly one-sided, and I'm sure that if Amazon responds, their response will be equally one-sided. So, let's see the alternatives.
Take a hint from your nearest university computer lab. Perfect physical security is impossible. You only need "good enough".
For most environments, Kensington cables and decent laptop software security are good enough. The odds are good that your laptop, your external drive, and maybe even your monitor already have Kensington connectors anyway. You're not fighting a dedicated thief. You're fighting a morally-challenged passerby, and you just need to slow them down enough for a coworker to notice and make a scene. Mitigation might well be easier than prevention: if extra machines are available, then keep private data encrypted (or better yet, off of the machine entirely), and make friends with the IT guy who has access to the spares. If you are dealing with dedicated thieves, the fight should begin elsewhere. Install cameras, restrict access, etc. It's a problem for management. If management won't act, then you need a big lockbox, and you need to move your stuff into it whenever you leave.
The whole signature based approach to AV seems so bizarre. Imagine trying to get into a nightclub.. The bouncer has a list. If you want to get in, he checks the list. If you're *not* on the list, then you can get in.
This is exactly how many bars, nightclubs, and restaurants operate. They have a list of "undesirables" (usually with pictures) who have caused problems in the past who aren't allowed in. Bouncers and maître d's are supposed to know the faces on the list.
It's not perfect, but blocking 95% of the problem is better than blocking nothing.
"If your startup is counting on a copycat service to emerge for Amazon S3 disaster recovery, you might want to start thinking about a Plan C.
Like most of the Slashdot hive-mind, I believe strongly that the patent system is broken and is in need of serious reform.
However, I do think that the concept behind patents is good: Give people with innovative new ideas a monopoly for a few years so that they might recover some of their development costs. (I'd make the time period of the patent much shorter and make a bunch of other adjustments that aren't relevant here.)
If competing services really are "copycats", they're exactly the sort of thing that patents were designed to prevent. Whether they're copycats (or if Amazon is copying other existing technology) is a more interesting question.
This is the video from the article. You can either watch it in the tiny embedded window, or you can go to youtube and click the button to watch it full-screen.
Look, posters: if you're going to point to a video that's hosted on YouTube (or another video hosting site), just link to that site. Don't link to some random web page that has the video embedded in it.
Depending on your needs, you might be able to get away with a handful of DVD burners. If, for example, you know that a backup will always take less than 3 DVDs, buy 3 or 4 burners. Then, make your backup, split it, and write a piece to each burner.
Spending a few hundred dollars on burners may be better than spending a few thousand on a robot.
Slashdot Mirror
My system:
1) An administrator account with a long but easy-to-read-over-the-phone password (a la https://xkcd.com/936/ correct-horse-battery-staple). This account has one big Teamviewer button on the desktop and nothing else. I encourage them not to write down this password.
2) A "mom" account with an easy password.
3) Hide the IE button
4) Chrome installed as "mom" so that it updates itself. Chrome also updates its built-in flash and pdf viewer, so that's two fewer things to worry about.
5) Microsoft Security Essentials with scheduled scans and updates. Other AV might be better, but it expires. MSE doesn't.
6) An external disk with automatic backups so that when something inevitably does go wrong, we have a way back.
Those support tasks don't exactly push hardware to its limit, and most of those tasks are the kind of thing that demands a bunch of redundant servers anyway.
Throw a bunch of "last generation" hardware at the task -- stuff from the "asset reclamation" pile. Leave a few more around as spares. Less disposal paperwork. Works just fine. By the time your last spare fails, you'll have a new generation of obsolete hardware.
I've done a little bit of environment taming in my day.
Everybody's already told you the "right" things to do. They're all right. Thing is, you need to get there somehow, and you're looking for a path from here to there. At least, I think that's what you're asking.
You already have bazaar. Good tool. Don't worry about bzr versus cvs versus hg right now. You picked something. Run with it.
I suggest a quick shell script that replaces your editor with "edit; check-in; offer to push". Create another quick script (call it "oops") that asks you whether you need a local or global revert, then issues the relevant commands. Push those scripts to all machines (maybe as their own bzr project). Now, you basically have the same process with a much larger safety net. This isn't software that's being released to the world. Don't worry about version numbers or branching. If you EVER have to change a file, throw it into version control.
Now, you can start to synchronize your scripts. With an environment that wild, you probably have a script that's almost-but-not-quite the same running on a bunch of machines. Maybe there's a hard-coded hostname or directory or something. Come up with a version that's more universal (Use big "if hostname = foo" blocks if you have to), and get that new universal script added to a project and pushed to all machines. Once they're all using it, you can slowly clean it up.
Cool. You have unified scripts. Now let's talk about those configuration files. I'll bet that they're also 99% identical across all of your machines. Get them all into the same project (call them config-machine1, config-machine2, etc.). Get them as identical as possible. Now, think about how you might handle differences. For a quick fix, I like the "magic comment" ("## BEGIN foo.sh MANAGED SECTION" and "## END foo.sh SECTION") and a perl script that looks for those strings. m4 also works well, and isn't too hard to learn.
"Okay, smart guy. I have all of the common config scripts, but I have a bunch of single-purpose machines and scripts, too!" Yup. Awesome. Get them into version control, too. You never know when that machine's going to suddenly die or your boss will break out in a fit of generousity and get you that second server for load balancing. (Hey! It could happen.) When it does, setup will be a lot easier if you have all of the config files in a project.
At this point in the game, you'll be pretty comfortable with version control. You'll have been burned once or twice, and it'll have saved your butt a few times. You'll have some experience, and you'll be kicking yourself for the way that you first set it up. Now's the time to revisit those decisions. Is it time to split up some projects or roll some together? Maybe git or hg might make more sense. Maybe you hate your life and your coworkers so much that you want to go to Perforce, ClearCase, or some other commercial software. You'll have the experience to design it right.
A lot of my biggest concerns have been addressed by others. A few things that I haven't seen covered:
The "30 second boot time" limit makes me assume that there is something time-sensitive about this data collection. (Otherwise, why would you be wasting time on it?) So, you need a fast boot, but then you're mucking around with Samba and union mounts, which are both relatively slow. This doesn't make any sense. This is why people are asking questions or making up odd scenarios in their answers.
The odd scenario that I'm assuming is that you have more drives than sleds, so you need to go through a few load-boot-read-shutdown-unload cycles to get all of your data OR the machine's being "borrowed" to read the data, so you need to bring it up with an alternate OS quickly so that you can work through the night before returning it to normal use in the morning.
If that's the case, it really sounds like (as someone else suggested) that you need to separate the collector from the persistent storage. Set up something that can read the data from all of your "dynamic" drives as fast as possible. Depending on the data, something like rsync or even netcat might be the fastest way to get data off of the machine.
In the US, there are two major "flavors" of cellphone technology: GSM (also used in Europe) and CDMA (also used in some parts of Asia). There are four major carriers: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile. There are also some (very good) regional carriers and a whole bunch of companies who re-sell from the big 4.
CDMA providers (in the US, Verizon and Sprint are the two big ones) don't have removable SIM cards, and they're not particularly friendly or helpful about unlocking existing phones. Verizon has, by far, the best coverage for the more rural parts of the US. So, if you're going to be out in the sticks, you might be stuck buying a shitty Verizon phone.
GSM providers WILL sell you a SIM, just like you're looking for, but they don't talk about it, and they don't offer any sort of commission to their store employees for it, so they won't offer it unless you ask. You walk in and buy a pre-paid SIM card, just like in Europe. The data prices suck if you don't get a data package (AT&T charges $2/MEGAbyte without a plan (or $2048/GB), but you can get $2/day unlimited data or pay $25 for a 1GB block of data), but you can get "Unlimited daily" plans for a few dollars per day. AT&T has better coverage than T-Mobile, but both are usually adequate in bigger cities. Neither's quite as good as Verizon in rural areas, but I've had better luck with AT&T than with T-Mobile.
Assuming that you're talking about these: http://www.digistor.com/Blu-ray-Recordable-Media/100GB-BD-R-Printable
That's $1175 (at $47/disk) to back up 2.5TB of data. Or, about $4000 and a whole lot of free time to back up the photos he already has, plus $20 per shoot.
It's a cool option, but not exactly an inexpensive one.
I'd like to see a law that stipulates that any store that offers products in plastic clamshell packaging MUST be willing to open all of the packages in the checkout line (no "go wait in a separate customer service line after paying") at no extra charge. Those packages would be gone within a year.
Right now, clamshell packaging is a huge win for the store, but all of the customer frustration is an externality. By forcing the stores to deal with the externality, we align store interests with consumer interests.
Whether that's true depends, to a great degree, on the environment and the threats that you're defending against.
I work in a secure, guarded building and have to swipe a card just to get to my desk. The odds that anyone else will EVER see me type a password are small. If I write down all of my passwords on a piece of paper that's kept in a locked desk drawer, the risk to the organization is minimal. There's no harm in forcing me to have an absurdly long password that's changed often, as I don't NEED to remember it.
On the other hand, a front-desk secretary doesn't have a private space. We need to ensure that his/her password is easy to remember and rarely changed so that the secretary is NEVER tempted to write it down.
(Personally, I use Keyring for PalmOS. You need to have the device and you need to know my keyring password to get anything else.)
First, don't forget physical security. Assume that someone WILL attempt to steal your netbook. Keep it in sight or locked up. Encrypt as much as you can (whole hard drive if at all possible). Make backups, even if that's just "webmail and flickr/picasa", to keep data loss to a minimum.
That said, I'd keep it simple. Get everything for your online banking set up before you go. Take a look at the certificates. Don't worry too much, but just know whether your bank's certificate has the name of your bank or the name of some parent company. Really, you want to know if something changes later.
Seriously consider two browsers: one for "safe" targeted work (checking bank balance, for example) and one for "browsing". Personally, I'd use Firefox for the safe stuff and Opera for everything else. The Opera Turbo http://www.opera.com/browser/turbo/ feature is really nice for slow or flaky connections.
Like most people, I have a small amount of truly irreplaceable content (documents, pictures) and a whole bunch of "it'd be annoying if I lost that" content (music, movies). One of the really convenient things about this split: the truly irreplaceable stuff is not very large. My docs and pictures occupy about 15 GB, and most of that is pictures.
I have an external hard drive where I back up everything at least nightly. This protects me from accidental deletions and a failed hard drive. It doesn't protect against fire or theft, though.
Services like Mozy and Carbonite offer off-site backup for about $5/month (there are many others -- these are the two best known, I think). I could string together something with a spare drive and a friend, but frankly, it would take a year or two before that approach matched the cost of Mozy et al., and frankly, I just don't WANT to worry about this crap. I'll pay the $60/year to make it someone else's problem.
One interesting option: Crash Plan at http://www4.crashplan.com/consumer/index.html . They offer free backups to friends' machines, and paid backups to their own fileservers. Sounds like the best of both worlds, but I haven't gotten around to trying it yet.
What browsers and operating systems are supported for webmail? Keep in mind that even if the university has a standard browser, people will be accessing their mail from elsewhere (home, conferences, etc.). Saying "Just use IE" is not acceptable.
Is there a way to access mail using encrypted POP or IMAP. POP or IMAP is essential because college users are incredibly mobile. Constant connectivity cannot be assumed. On a related note, how do users check mail from cell phones?
When users access mail from a browser, is there decent security? Are the certificates properly signed?
Is there a way to offer integrated authentication so that users can sign on using their university ID and password?
I'm not sure that it's an eye defect. I think the "problem" is that humans are remarkably adaptable.
When I was younger, I had a cheap record and cassette player. It sounded fine. I had a friend with more money who had a nice stereo with a CD player. When I first visited, I could sort-of tell the difference, but it wasn't a big deal. After visiting his place regularly, my ears became accustomed to the higher quality. My own stereo started to sound worse and worse.
There was a time when everyone had VCRs. The quality was fine. Yeah, that over-used tape from the video place might crackle a little bit, but you could still tell what was going on, and it usually looked better than television. Everybody thought that the only advantage to DVDs was their disk shape. No more rewinding! As time passed, we all ended up with DVD players and became accustomed to that level of video quality. Have you watched a videotape in the last year or two? It's kind of painful, really. It's on par with Youtube.
I suspect that the same thing will happen with Blu-Ray. We'll slowly upgrade our TVs and players as the current ones die. We'll buy the Blu-Ray version of the movie because, hey, we already have the player. No need to upgrade existing movies because they still look fine. Eventually, the majority of people's collections will be Blu-Ray. We'll adjust to that level of picture quality. We'll pop in the DVD version of a movie, and it'll look just AWFUL on the 90" set that we watch from a few feet away.
I would appreciate even a link on how to underclock a CPU on OpenBSD.
OS is irrelevant. When the machine starts, you need to go into the BIOS. That probably means pressing F1 or Del. Somewhere in there will be speed settings (maybe "clock" and "multiplier" with that age of machine). Write down the original settings. Then, start dropping the speed. If you have "clock" and "multiplier", drop multiplier first. Drop a little bit, save, reboot. Make sure the OS still works. If it does, drop another notch. Repeat until you run out of settings, it's too slow for its intended purpose, or it starts to feel like Windows Vista.
If you go too far, either try rebooting (some machines will always boot into the BIOS at a safe speed), or open up the case and take out the little battery overnight. When you put it back, the BIOS should reset to something useable.
The rfc is broken, as it assumes no one would lie in their 'MAIL FROM' field.
butbutbut... I thought that RFCs were writs directly from God. They are INFALLIBLE, I tell you! That is why they are never considered obsolete. EVER! Only heretics dare say otherwise.
I think it's important to realize that voting machines are so insecure that preventing fraud entirely is impossible. That said,
1) Ensure that the machines are physically safe before the election. Don't leave them in an insecure area between the time that you check them to ensure that the counts are at zero (and DO check that) and the time that voting begins. Allow nobody near the machines without both ID and a witness at all times, including yourself (you don't want to be accused of anything), ESPECIALLY if they claim to work for the company that makes the machines. In fact, if anyone you don't know shows up to work on the machines, get approval from as far up the chain of command as can be managed and WRITE DOWN the name, time, etc. if it happens. Consider some sort of tamper-evident seal for the area where the machines are stored (your local trucking company can provide you with a handful of the ones that they use on freight trailers).
2) Watch for voters who are holding either memory cards or keys. The best-publicized ways of messing with a machine involve unlocking the machine and/or inserting a card with altered data. Keep in mind that the memory cards can be a lot smaller than those giant plastic cases around some of the official cards. Also keep in mind that if you see this, it might just be somebody with a spare memory card for their camera and a set of car keys.
3) After the polls close, physical access becomes a big deal again. Don't allow anyone near the machines or cards without ID and a witness, including yourself. Ensure that the machines are locked away, and find out who has a copy of the key to the room/closet/truck/whatever.
At a previous job, I had to spend some time processing the DMCA notices. They were obviously auto-generated, and it was pretty common for them to just not make sense. IP address but no timestamp (very handy for dynamic address ranges), indecipherable protocol in the url (really. When even Google's no help, you need to at least provide a -hint-.), etc. When I'd respond with simple questions, it would take them weeks to respond. Meanwhile, they expected people to jump on their requests within hours.
It seems like only one hammer is needed for you scenario.
So, what's the second hammer for? A redundant array of independent hammers?
Some of which are still flying. The rule is there because nobody can ensure that the airplane you're on and every other nearby plane at the airport are safe.
Also, not a single one of those old phones that DID cause the interference is in use today since those old networks were dismantled years ago.
For values of years ago that include two months ago. There were people using those networks up until the last day, too. In the more rural parts of the country, an old analog phone was often more useful than a newer phone.
What other online booksellers are out there? Particularly booksellers that deal with POD?
If Amazon's being evil, I'm willing to take my business elsewhere.
If Amazon's the only online bookseller who's willing to touch this stuff, then perhaps it's time for the POD industry to stop and take a long, hard look at itself.
I really don't know which is true. The article is terribly one-sided, and I'm sure that if Amazon responds, their response will be equally one-sided. So, let's see the alternatives.
Surely somebody has put this stuff on a p2p network somewhere. Does anyone have links to it?
Take a hint from your nearest university computer lab. Perfect physical security is impossible. You only need "good enough".
For most environments, Kensington cables and decent laptop software security are good enough. The odds are good that your laptop, your external drive, and maybe even your monitor already have Kensington connectors anyway. You're not fighting a dedicated thief. You're fighting a morally-challenged passerby, and you just need to slow them down enough for a coworker to notice and make a scene. Mitigation might well be easier than prevention: if extra machines are available, then keep private data encrypted (or better yet, off of the machine entirely), and make friends with the IT guy who has access to the spares. If you are dealing with dedicated thieves, the fight should begin elsewhere. Install cameras, restrict access, etc. It's a problem for management. If management won't act, then you need a big lockbox, and you need to move your stuff into it whenever you leave.
This is exactly how many bars, nightclubs, and restaurants operate. They have a list of "undesirables" (usually with pictures) who have caused problems in the past who aren't allowed in. Bouncers and maître d's are supposed to know the faces on the list.
It's not perfect, but blocking 95% of the problem is better than blocking nothing.
Like most of the Slashdot hive-mind, I believe strongly that the patent system is broken and is in need of serious reform.
However, I do think that the concept behind patents is good: Give people with innovative new ideas a monopoly for a few years so that they might recover some of their development costs. (I'd make the time period of the patent much shorter and make a bunch of other adjustments that aren't relevant here.)
If competing services really are "copycats", they're exactly the sort of thing that patents were designed to prevent. Whether they're copycats (or if Amazon is copying other existing technology) is a more interesting question.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8
This is the video from the article. You can either watch it in the tiny embedded window, or you can go to youtube and click the button to watch it full-screen.
Look, posters: if you're going to point to a video that's hosted on YouTube (or another video hosting site), just link to that site. Don't link to some random web page that has the video embedded in it.
Depending on your needs, you might be able to get away with a handful of DVD burners. If, for example, you know that a backup will always take less than 3 DVDs, buy 3 or 4 burners. Then, make your backup, split it, and write a piece to each burner.
Spending a few hundred dollars on burners may be better than spending a few thousand on a robot.