There are two types of insurance that they're offering you in this package:
-Liability insurance (somebody sues you because of X)
-Accident insurance (a bad thing happens that costs a lot of money to fix)
You need to treat these separately. My take on it:
-You need some sort of liability insurance, particularly if you're dealing with americans (I say this as an american, and I am ashamed). This may be as simple as "kick-ass lawyers on retainer" or it may be a comprehensive liability insurance policy. Make sure that your liability policy covers computer-related events.
-You're going to get screwed on the accident insurance. There'll be words scattered throughout the policy that relieve the insurance company of liability if anyone at all can claim that it's your fault. Since there's -always- something else that you can do to protect yourself, you won't ever be covered if the shit hits the fan. Hire a good dedicated sysadmin (or several, if you can afford it) who has a good idea of industry best practices, including comprehensive recovery policies. Develop clear policies and procedures and run them past a technically-clued lawyer (yes, they do exist!) to ensure that you've covered privacy issues adequately. Once you have a disaster recovery plan, figure out how much it'll cost (yes, this means collaboration with the bean-counters), and convince the head boss to ensure that there's enough cash available to implement the disaster plan. If the cash isn't available, get insurance for at least that amount.
This work will cause a one-time cost hit that's probably more than $3500, but you'll know exactly what you're getting, and more importantly, you'll be getting something more than a hot-air promise from an insurance salesman. You'll actually make your business more stable and more attractive to clients and investors ("We have a comprehensive disaster recovery plan" makes big customers happy because they worry about what happens if your little company goes away). As a nice side effect, it'll probably lower your insurance premiums because you're a lower risk.
I love slashdot. After I made this post, I was worried that someone'd call me out on my use of the phrase "traffic analysis". Most people use "traffic analysis" to refer to a sort of meta-analysis: that is, looking at where messages are going and their characteristics rather than the contents of the messages. I was thinking of the routine "scan the traffic looking for known plaintext".
Instead, I got an angry follow-up that was just plain wrong, missed the point, and pulled the "I think you might be wrong, but I won't do any research" trick. For what it's worth, info on the Kerberos changes is available from ftp://athena-dist.mit.edu/pub/kerberos/doc/krb_evo l.PS This is a summary, but there's mention on pages 5 and 7 of the encryption changes and the movement of some data to plaintext.
Actually, some kinds of data are -more- secure when they're only encrypted at a higher layer. If you know certain things about the encrypted data (like port numbers or hostnames or timestamps or the like), it's easier to do traffic analysis: you have some known plaintext to search for. If nothing else, you're providing more data for a brute-force attack.
Crypto 101: don't encrypt any redundant or easy-to-guess data. That's why PGP compresses data before encrypting it.In World War 2, the allies searched for the phrase "Heil Hitler" in encrypted German messages. It worked with surprising frequency. Many of the attacks against Kerberos 4 rely on excessive encryption: if you're sending a request from a specific host, it's kind of silly to encrypt the name of the host that's requesting a ticket. It's just one more bit of plaintext to search for. That's why Kerberos 5 moved more information to plaintext.
Written in c++ - portable, accessible, small and fast
However, if I try to compile it on anything but a Linux system, I see something like:
set -e; g++ -MM -MF joystick.d -Wall -Werror -DLINUX -I../ joystick.cpp
joystick.cpp:20:28: linux/joystick.h: No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [joystick.d] Error 1
make: *** [winux] Error 2
Why is portable code looking for linux/joystick.h? Maybe, by portable, they mean "you can use it on more than one linux distro."
This is a fun idea in the abstract, but if you're looking for concrete advice, you need to give us some concrete data. Most importantly, -what- are you rendering?
If you're at a university and you're doing some sort of bioinformatics visualization, use whatever the researchers are most comfortable with. The odds are good that this is whatever the CS department was teaching on 5 years ago. Probably Suns or Windows machines. Slave... errr, grad student labor is cheap, so use an OSS scheduling and job management system if you can.
At most other places, a similar rule applies: use whatever the users are most comfortable with. If you're using Mac workstations and software, then it may make sense to go with a G5 rendering farm. If you're using Windows... well, okay. Windows render farms still suck, but at least buy PCs to leave your options open. Unless you're a really large organization (that is, the sort that doesn't have to resort to Ask Slashdot for research), you probably want to use products that come with support contracts. $20k/year is a pretty good deal when compared to keeping a full-time support person for the same task.
Re:Not surprising, and not bad.
on
RIP G4 PowerMac
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
You do know that there's never been a recorded instance in the wild of a remote compromise of a Classic Mac OS machine, right?
Ummm... not true, at least as written. Timbuktu and the like have been responsible for plenty of compromises, and lousy network security and setup has been responsible for others.
The big "advantage" of 9 is that there's really nothing to do once you have remote access. You need a control interface -- either GUI or shell -- and 9 doesn't have one built in.
What's their business model for supporting the project?
According to the Wired News article linked to above, they're going to sell DRM-encoded songs but ship them from end-users' hard drives rather than from a central server.
Looking at the Mercora web site, they seem far more p2p-oriented. I'm guessing that, like Kazaa, they plan on making extra money by installing a metric ton of spyware on your PC.
I'm in a similar camp, only my concerns are about power.
When SETI@Home came out, it was one of the only games in town, and computer power management was rare and didn't work well. The computer was going to use 100 watts whether you were using it or not, so it made more sense to put it to use.
Today, there's a very good chance that if you leave your computer idle, it'll eventually go into some sort of reduced-power mode. Given the complicated nature of the world energy situation (Californai blackouts, wars for oil, etc.), I'd rather not waste energy.
Still, these projects are cool, and I'll do what I can to help. My compromise approach has been to run Folding@Home on the machines at my disposal during the winter (when they're throwing off heat that we'd have to generate anyway) and to shut down all of the clients once it gets warmer.
Last fall, I took a class with a bunch of CS seniors (in fact, you had to be at least a senior in the BS program to get in). One of the people in the class:
-Ran no AV program because -real- geeks don't get viruses, and the AV programs "slow his machine down too much".
-Ran every p2p app under the sun
-Claimed that Linux was just as insecure as Windows, except that it was the huge Windows userbase that was responsible for the number of viruses.
-Reinstalled Windows every month "to keep it running well".
My "twitch" reflexes aren't very good. This means that I -really- suck at close-quarters combat in most first-person shooters. So, I grab the sniper rifle and head for the hills. It's amazing how many bunny-hoppers will sit still for a head shot as soon as they think nobody's watching.
The thing is, I make no secret of this. In fact, I don't like "perfect" sniping spots. If you can't hit me, the game's no fun. I think the UT "lightning gun" was a beautiful compromise for snipers. My goal is to make people cringe and cower every time they enter an area with an overhead vantage point. Their extra paranoia (often justified) slows 'em down enough that I actually have a chance when I do come down to ground level.
My preferred vantage point is on the top floor of a level within sight of the elevator or top of the stairs. That means that I have to watch my back and be ready whenever I hear the elevator. It also means that when I reveal that strategy after the game, the guy who was hit with half a dozen head shots -really- kicks himself. >:-)
They make waterproof disposable cameras. If your local photo shop doesn't carry one, amazon has them here. If you don't think one will be enough, buy two or three. It's still cheaper than the cheapest waterproof reusable camera. It's relatively dark underwater, so these things tend to have higher-speed film (meaning a lighter picture), too.
Kerberos is built-in to most modern linux distros. So is OpenLDAP. Unfortunately, the exact LDAP setup is left to the site. I've yet to see a large LDAP implementation that didn't do a few things with custom fields. I've also not yet seen a site that clearly documents their setup and customizations. The attitude is usually "the next guy can reverse-engineer my work, and that won't be a problem if he's a -real- sysadmin."
The Windows domain jackboots only give you one way to set things up. That means that they're all set up the same way.
Re:because it's an ugly, lumbering dinosaur
on
Postfix 2.1 Released
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Sigh. s/SNMP/SMTP/g
If an SNMP-based mail system exists, I don't want to know about it.:-)
Re:because it's an ugly, lumbering dinosaur
on
Postfix 2.1 Released
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Postfix has a sendmail-compatable setup where it creates a binary named "sendmail" that accepts common sendmail flags. In most setups, a switch-over is totally transparent.
The hardest part is deciding which of your Sendmail optimizations are still necessary on Postfix.
Sendmail is mostly around because of inertia. It can also do a few sick things (like bridging SNMP and non-SNMP mail systems) that are not necessary for most sane people.
You just can't tell the difference between a pointer and an int in C.
There are plenty of bad programmers who can't. Once you start using a platform where int and pointers are different sizes (most compilers for the Alpha, for example), that bad programming really starts to become a hassle. You also see a lot of programs written by people who don't know the difference between big- and little-endian systems, so they try to do "clever" things like calculating array locations by performing boolean addition between ints and pointers.
You can't say "X doesn't work in C" just because bad programming is endemic in C. Maybe you mean "X doesn't work with the poorly-written programs that make up the majority of C code." There's a difference between "the language doesn't support this" and "the crappy codebase doesn't support this."
I think the "full C compatability" is a problem. It's -not- a feature.
In "small program" languages like perl, giving people lots of ways to do things is a feature. In a "large program" language, providing both C compatability and garbage collection is a maintainability nightmare. You'll have people who use both, or worse yet, who only understand one, so to understand the mixed code that results from a hybrid langage like this, you'll have to be utterly proficient with -both- languages.
For the record, the torrent that I created was a whopping 188 bytes. Which is to say that the http overhead is probably larger than the file size. Hell, the TCP overhead is close.
How long before nVidia and ATI fanboys get into wars about which company's "dirt and grit engine" is better?
I predict that nVidia's next driver release actually adds back in some of artifacts that their old drivers used to leave all over the screen. They will claim that this is their new Enhanced Reality Engine and sic lawyers on any site that bitches about the artifacts.
Cidco makes a product called the MailStation. It's a keyboard connected to a small LCD screen for people who just want email. As it's a single-purpose device, I suspect that it's relatively easy to use.
I'm thrilled: finally an article with "A big file has been released. Here's the torrent." No more waiting an hour for someone to download at a trickle, set up a torrent, post, and then have the post moderated up.
also, say grandma gets infected. She is best off downloading updated definitions for her old version of symantec, and letting AV take care of it. how do you do that with no intarweb?
Almost every AV vendor out there offers an "offline download" of full definitions for machines that aren't on the network. Grandma had better find another computer or call someone and get those definitions.
A pain in the ass? Youbetcha. But after she's suffered through the pain once, you can be sure that she'll keep her machine up to date.
Basic Real Martini -1 martini glass, chilled but not frosted -1 splash of chilled, dry vermouth -1 shot of good gin (I like Bombay Sapphire, but Tanqueray is also popular.) -1-2 green olives (substitute a cocktail onion for a Gibson)
Pour a little bit of the vermouth in the glass and swirl it around to coat the inside of the glass. Skewer an olive or two on a toothpick and toss 'em in the glass. Pour a bit of the vermouth from the glass into a shaker filled with ice. Add the gin to the shaker. Wrap the shaker in a towel and shake vigorously for at least a minute. Pour into the martini glass. Enjoy.
A few notes:
-Gin used to have a much stronger juniper flavor. The vermouth was used to cut the gin to make the flavor more mild. The olive does the same thing and looks pretty. These days, most gin has a milder flavor to begin with, hence the contempt for vermouth.
-There's no such thing as a "gin martini". All martinis are gin martinis unless you specify a substitute, like the "vodka martini".
-Yes, a martini is basically very cold weak gin. That's sort of the point: have you tried straight warm gin? It's too strong for most people. When you make it colder and weaker, it tastes almost sweet. It also has a "breathing icy air" effect like eating a strong mint.
-Presentation matters. At all times, act like you know what you're doing. If you spill anything over the edge of the glass, wipe the glass before serving. Ideally, you want a faint condensation on the outside of the glass, and a slight swirl of olive oils on the surface of the drink.
Slashdot Mirror
So... It's not yet ready for prime time, and it's the ultimate BSD.
:-)
I guess the trolls were right. BSD is dead. Dragonfly is the ultimate BSD by virtue of being closer to dead than the others.
There are two types of insurance that they're offering you in this package:
-Liability insurance (somebody sues you because of X)
-Accident insurance (a bad thing happens that costs a lot of money to fix)
You need to treat these separately. My take on it:
-You need some sort of liability insurance, particularly if you're dealing with americans (I say this as an american, and I am ashamed). This may be as simple as "kick-ass lawyers on retainer" or it may be a comprehensive liability insurance policy. Make sure that your liability policy covers computer-related events.
-You're going to get screwed on the accident insurance. There'll be words scattered throughout the policy that relieve the insurance company of liability if anyone at all can claim that it's your fault. Since there's -always- something else that you can do to protect yourself, you won't ever be covered if the shit hits the fan. Hire a good dedicated sysadmin (or several, if you can afford it) who has a good idea of industry best practices, including comprehensive recovery policies. Develop clear policies and procedures and run them past a technically-clued lawyer (yes, they do exist!) to ensure that you've covered privacy issues adequately. Once you have a disaster recovery plan, figure out how much it'll cost (yes, this means collaboration with the bean-counters), and convince the head boss to ensure that there's enough cash available to implement the disaster plan. If the cash isn't available, get insurance for at least that amount.
This work will cause a one-time cost hit that's probably more than $3500, but you'll know exactly what you're getting, and more importantly, you'll be getting something more than a hot-air promise from an insurance salesman. You'll actually make your business more stable and more attractive to clients and investors ("We have a comprehensive disaster recovery plan" makes big customers happy because they worry about what happens if your little company goes away). As a nice side effect, it'll probably lower your insurance premiums because you're a lower risk.
I love slashdot. After I made this post, I was worried that someone'd call me out on my use of the phrase "traffic analysis". Most people use "traffic analysis" to refer to a sort of meta-analysis: that is, looking at where messages are going and their characteristics rather than the contents of the messages. I was thinking of the routine "scan the traffic looking for known plaintext".
o l.PS
Instead, I got an angry follow-up that was just plain wrong, missed the point, and pulled the "I think you might be wrong, but I won't do any research" trick. For what it's worth, info on the Kerberos changes is available from ftp://athena-dist.mit.edu/pub/kerberos/doc/krb_ev
This is a summary, but there's mention on pages 5 and 7 of the encryption changes and the movement of some data to plaintext.
Actually, some kinds of data are -more- secure when they're only encrypted at a higher layer. If you know certain things about the encrypted data (like port numbers or hostnames or timestamps or the like), it's easier to do traffic analysis: you have some known plaintext to search for. If nothing else, you're providing more data for a brute-force attack.
Crypto 101: don't encrypt any redundant or easy-to-guess data. That's why PGP compresses data before encrypting it.In World War 2, the allies searched for the phrase "Heil Hitler" in encrypted German messages. It worked with surprising frequency. Many of the attacks against Kerberos 4 rely on excessive encryption: if you're sending a request from a specific host, it's kind of silly to encrypt the name of the host that's requesting a ticket. It's just one more bit of plaintext to search for. That's why Kerberos 5 moved more information to plaintext.
- Written in c++ - portable, accessible, small and fast
However, if I try to compile it on anything but a Linux system, I see something like:set -e; g++ -MM -MF joystick.d -Wall -Werror -DLINUX -I../ joystick.cpp
joystick.cpp:20:28: linux/joystick.h: No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [joystick.d] Error 1
make: *** [winux] Error 2
Why is portable code looking for linux/joystick.h? Maybe, by portable, they mean "you can use it on more than one linux distro."
This is a fun idea in the abstract, but if you're looking for concrete advice, you need to give us some concrete data. Most importantly, -what- are you rendering?
If you're at a university and you're doing some sort of bioinformatics visualization, use whatever the researchers are most comfortable with. The odds are good that this is whatever the CS department was teaching on 5 years ago. Probably Suns or Windows machines. Slave... errr, grad student labor is cheap, so use an OSS scheduling and job management system if you can.
At most other places, a similar rule applies: use whatever the users are most comfortable with. If you're using Mac workstations and software, then it may make sense to go with a G5 rendering farm. If you're using Windows... well, okay. Windows render farms still suck, but at least buy PCs to leave your options open. Unless you're a really large organization (that is, the sort that doesn't have to resort to Ask Slashdot for research), you probably want to use products that come with support contracts. $20k/year is a pretty good deal when compared to keeping a full-time support person for the same task.
Ummm... not true, at least as written. Timbuktu and the like have been responsible for plenty of compromises, and lousy network security and setup has been responsible for others.
The big "advantage" of 9 is that there's really nothing to do once you have remote access. You need a control interface -- either GUI or shell -- and 9 doesn't have one built in.
According to the Wired News article linked to above, they're going to sell DRM-encoded songs but ship them from end-users' hard drives rather than from a central server.
Looking at the Mercora web site, they seem far more p2p-oriented. I'm guessing that, like Kazaa, they plan on making extra money by installing a metric ton of spyware on your PC.
I'm in a similar camp, only my concerns are about power.
When SETI@Home came out, it was one of the only games in town, and computer power management was rare and didn't work well. The computer was going to use 100 watts whether you were using it or not, so it made more sense to put it to use.
Today, there's a very good chance that if you leave your computer idle, it'll eventually go into some sort of reduced-power mode. Given the complicated nature of the world energy situation (Californai blackouts, wars for oil, etc.), I'd rather not waste energy.
Still, these projects are cool, and I'll do what I can to help. My compromise approach has been to run Folding@Home on the machines at my disposal during the winter (when they're throwing off heat that we'd have to generate anyway) and to shut down all of the clients once it gets warmer.
Last fall, I took a class with a bunch of CS seniors (in fact, you had to be at least a senior in the BS program to get in). One of the people in the class:
-Ran no AV program because -real- geeks don't get viruses, and the AV programs "slow his machine down too much".
-Ran every p2p app under the sun
-Claimed that Linux was just as insecure as Windows, except that it was the huge Windows userbase that was responsible for the number of viruses.
-Reinstalled Windows every month "to keep it running well".
The dude just didn't get it.
My "twitch" reflexes aren't very good. This means that I -really- suck at close-quarters combat in most first-person shooters. So, I grab the sniper rifle and head for the hills. It's amazing how many bunny-hoppers will sit still for a head shot as soon as they think nobody's watching.
The thing is, I make no secret of this. In fact, I don't like "perfect" sniping spots. If you can't hit me, the game's no fun. I think the UT "lightning gun" was a beautiful compromise for snipers. My goal is to make people cringe and cower every time they enter an area with an overhead vantage point. Their extra paranoia (often justified) slows 'em down enough that I actually have a chance when I do come down to ground level.
My preferred vantage point is on the top floor of a level within sight of the elevator or top of the stairs. That means that I have to watch my back and be ready whenever I hear the elevator. It also means that when I reveal that strategy after the game, the guy who was hit with half a dozen head shots -really- kicks himself. >:-)
They make waterproof disposable cameras. If your local photo shop doesn't carry one, amazon has them here. If you don't think one will be enough, buy two or three. It's still cheaper than the cheapest waterproof reusable camera. It's relatively dark underwater, so these things tend to have higher-speed film (meaning a lighter picture), too.
The problem is the flexibility.
Kerberos is built-in to most modern linux distros. So is OpenLDAP. Unfortunately, the exact LDAP setup is left to the site. I've yet to see a large LDAP implementation that didn't do a few things with custom fields. I've also not yet seen a site that clearly documents their setup and customizations. The attitude is usually "the next guy can reverse-engineer my work, and that won't be a problem if he's a -real- sysadmin."
The Windows domain jackboots only give you one way to set things up. That means that they're all set up the same way.
Sigh. s/SNMP/SMTP/g
:-)
If an SNMP-based mail system exists, I don't want to know about it.
Postfix has a sendmail-compatable setup where it creates a binary named "sendmail" that accepts common sendmail flags. In most setups, a switch-over is totally transparent.
The hardest part is deciding which of your Sendmail optimizations are still necessary on Postfix.
Sendmail is mostly around because of inertia. It can also do a few sick things (like bridging SNMP and non-SNMP mail systems) that are not necessary for most sane people.
You just can't tell the difference between a pointer and an int in C.
There are plenty of bad programmers who can't. Once you start using a platform where int and pointers are different sizes (most compilers for the Alpha, for example), that bad programming really starts to become a hassle. You also see a lot of programs written by people who don't know the difference between big- and little-endian systems, so they try to do "clever" things like calculating array locations by performing boolean addition between ints and pointers.
You can't say "X doesn't work in C" just because bad programming is endemic in C. Maybe you mean "X doesn't work with the poorly-written programs that make up the majority of C code." There's a difference between "the language doesn't support this" and "the crappy codebase doesn't support this."
I think the "full C compatability" is a problem. It's -not- a feature.
In "small program" languages like perl, giving people lots of ways to do things is a feature. In a "large program" language, providing both C compatability and garbage collection is a maintainability nightmare. You'll have people who use both, or worse yet, who only understand one, so to understand the mixed code that results from a hybrid langage like this, you'll have to be utterly proficient with -both- languages.
For the record, the torrent that I created was a whopping 188 bytes. Which is to say that the http overhead is probably larger than the file size. Hell, the TCP overhead is close.
Someone had to do it. Get your .torrent here
A hint: those ssh exploits aren't theoretical. They're in active use.
Have you run Tripwire (/AIDE/whatever) lately?
How long before nVidia and ATI fanboys get into wars about which company's "dirt and grit engine" is better?
I predict that nVidia's next driver release actually adds back in some of artifacts that their old drivers used to leave all over the screen. They will claim that this is their new Enhanced Reality Engine and sic lawyers on any site that bitches about the artifacts.
Cidco makes a product called the MailStation. It's a keyboard connected to a small LCD screen for people who just want email. As it's a single-purpose device, I suspect that it's relatively easy to use.
I'm thrilled: finally an article with "A big file has been released. Here's the torrent." No more waiting an hour for someone to download at a trickle, set up a torrent, post, and then have the post moderated up.
also, say grandma gets infected. She is best off downloading updated definitions for her old version of symantec, and letting AV take care of it. how do you do that with no intarweb?
Almost every AV vendor out there offers an "offline download" of full definitions for machines that aren't on the network. Grandma had better find another computer or call someone and get those definitions.
A pain in the ass? Youbetcha. But after she's suffered through the pain once, you can be sure that she'll keep her machine up to date.
Basic Real Martini
-1 martini glass, chilled but not frosted
-1 splash of chilled, dry vermouth
-1 shot of good gin (I like Bombay Sapphire, but Tanqueray is also popular.)
-1-2 green olives (substitute a cocktail onion for a Gibson)
Pour a little bit of the vermouth in the glass and swirl it around to coat the inside of the glass. Skewer an olive or two on a toothpick and toss 'em in the glass. Pour a bit of the vermouth from the glass into a shaker filled with ice. Add the gin to the shaker. Wrap the shaker in a towel and shake vigorously for at least a minute. Pour into the martini glass. Enjoy.
A few notes:
-Gin used to have a much stronger juniper flavor. The vermouth was used to cut the gin to make the flavor more mild. The olive does the same thing and looks pretty. These days, most gin has a milder flavor to begin with, hence the contempt for vermouth.
-There's no such thing as a "gin martini". All martinis are gin martinis unless you specify a substitute, like the "vodka martini".
-Yes, a martini is basically very cold weak gin. That's sort of the point: have you tried straight warm gin? It's too strong for most people. When you make it colder and weaker, it tastes almost sweet. It also has a "breathing icy air" effect like eating a strong mint.
-Presentation matters. At all times, act like you know what you're doing. If you spill anything over the edge of the glass, wipe the glass before serving. Ideally, you want a faint condensation on the outside of the glass, and a slight swirl of olive oils on the surface of the drink.