It was pretty funny; downdetector.co.uk showed the problem very clearly, affecting large swathes of the country for about 3 hours. And on the same page, there was BT Care suggesting that people reset their routers and reboot their PCs:)
When it went down, a quick traceroute showed the problem to be at BT@Telehouse. Luckily, we retained connectivity to our hosted server (even though most of the rest of the net was unreachable) so a combination of 'ssh -D 1080' and twiddling proxy settings worked around it (note: must look into 'tsocks').
It was a very big outage (despite all the PR flackery seeking to minimise it). And shame on BT, for having a single point failure like that cause such disruption.
This is a very good point;it's almost less what's there, than what's been left out.
As i understand the story so far, some southerm german paper gets this leak and enlists a *Washington DC* organisation (ICIJ) to ensure the relevant informatiion is appropriately publicised.
This seems well-timed, just two days after David Anderson QC's report calling the UK surveillance powers "undemocratic", "fragmented" and "obscure". Got to keep the populace onside while working towards the next set of even-more intrusive laws, all in their own interest of course!
Cut a couple of old HDDs in half, glue bits of platter to the head arms, add large-area photodiodes to sense position and a bit of hardware and software to read ILDA files. Works really well considering.
The word 'criminal' should surely only be applied *after* he has been tried and convicted (and while it seems very likely he would be so convicted, there is presumably some small chance he could be found 'not guilty').
Sadly, despite being a long-term FF user, it pains me to say it's far easier is to switch to Palemoon; it's a minimal effort and the result is firefox without all the BS (Palemoon being a firefox fork/tracker that values functionality over hipster cool)
Still running the same distro here, from 1999 (and am mercifully free of systemd, pulseaudio, etc). All upgrades have been done by downloading and compiling from source, with the exception of a small number of large programs/drivers (specifically Firefox, Palemoon, OpenOffice, Java, nvidia driver). This 'in-house' distro gets copied onto all new computers, so there's about 50 or 60 running it (including a few laptops). So what doesn't work?
In short, not a lot. Occasionally have to 'chmod a+rw' something in/dev (easier than running udevd), but that's about it. Written a couple of init scripts, fixed a few others (all very simple, maybe a day in total).
The best bit is, if anything breaks we can fix it - easily.
As to why modern distro's are so complex: "follow the money". If everything was so simple that no-one needed support, well, there goes the business model of all the major distros. So it's not unexpected they put developers in change who like 'elegant' (read complex, bloated, impenetrable and obscure) solutions - it means that end-users pretty much have to fork out for a support contract (or spend a *lot of time* on inhouse admin).
How does Linux compile his kernel? Certainly I use a parallel make across as many cores as possible (well, up to the point where there's a core for every compilation unit).
The comments above about SS7 being designed without security are spot-on. In the old days, access to the SS7 network was strictly for big players and salesmen with 'extremely customer-friendly' expense accounts. Basically, anyone with access was a big player (with all the baggage that entails).
Really, the issue here is with MAP (an add-on to SS7 to support mobiles). The explosion of mobile means SS7 is no longer just the playing field for national carriers - mobile-only operators came to the party (still all $xbillion players). Then, smaller countries with some interesting networks came on the scene, and rather naughty SS7 traffic started to appear on the network.
Smarter operators (or at least bigger ones who got their fingers burnt) spent money to install gateways that limit and control their exposure (wouldn't you?). The less clueful/more cash-strapped/networks in less-developed countries remain more exposed.
Anyone interested can search for 'SS7 mobility management' ; the <a href="http://www.informit.com/library/content.aspx?b=Signaling_System_No_7&seqNum=116">code is easy</a>, the issue is getting access to the network.
Oh, wait, these days SS7 is being routed over IP now (ever wondered what the <a href="http://lksctp.sourceforge.net/">linux SCTP module</a> is actually for?).
And C++ doesn't? (cited as it was mentioned as something better).
Any high-level language is an elaboration on the underlying reality. C is closer to whats really going on than its offspring (a simple consequence of it being built at the time we were learning to drive computers effectively).
Really, the argument is about teaching people how to drive when they don't know what's going on under the hood. How many people these days care about that? Like your average programmer, they just want to get from A to B.
The killer advantage of systemd is the money it makes. By integrating this software into our distro, we can be sure that any business using linux will take one look at the complexity, binary logs, and other great features and realise they really need to pay for a support contract. You see, this fixes the problem of the old, really lame (simple, yuk!) systems that have been around for years - anyone with a bit of shell knowledge can learn them in a few minutes, and it's really hard to make money when kids with some computing knowledge can sort system problems out. No, in order to convince customers that support contracts are necessary we need to replace the easy, working stuff with something we invented, something far richer, something that we can integrate into the system and which gives us addtional control. With this approach, we can effectively neutralise all those damn people who can learn how the system works in their spare time. Just make it so complex, only paid professionals can afford to flail about fixing things! As is clear, systemd fits that bill perfectly (along with pulseaudio and a nod to udev). Never mind all those whining ninnies (hey, tell them to go pay for a support contract if they want to use linux). What really matters here is the benefit to the bottom line - just remember, people, complex crap sells support contracts!
In summary, systemd is great on other's people machines - when you'd getting paid by the hour!
Interestingly, there's a report in the Telegraph today suggesting that driverless buses could be on the roads in the UK pretty soon.
On the one hand, this makes sense - the complexity of the problem is reduced with a vehicle following a pre-programmed route.
On the other hand, I'm deeply sceptical - taking the assumption that such vehicles would have to be super-safe to be accepted, I can see a spate of teens having fun baiting autobuses into emergency stops. Oh, and cyclists will totally rule the roads - get in front of a bus and pedal as slow as you like.
Eww....sweep it under the carpet, clean up the mess, move quietly on with the same old same old. A quiet burial, nothing to see here citizen, move along now, move along.
Here in the southern UK we've had solar LED road studs for years - they are used on some A roads and mark line dividers, road edges and turn-offs in place of the usual cats-eyes. Work pretty well too (though I find them a bit 'stroby', like some vehicle brake lights).
I thought the point was clear, but to attempt to make it more so:
Eric Schmidt stated if there was stuff we didn't want people to know, we shouldn't be doing it. (this was way before the Snowden leaks).
He made it a clear position - don't do anything you don't want to be made public (search back for the old discussion on here about it, as I recall he didn't come out of it well).
So now he's saying the opposite - that we can trust him with stuff we don't people to know (i.e. everything Google knows about us).
Our opinions in how much trust to him are clearly divergent.
Slashdot Mirror
man 8 tsocks
Graph of outage.
It was pretty funny; downdetector.co.uk showed the problem very clearly, affecting large swathes of the country for about 3 hours. And on the same page, there was BT Care suggesting that people reset their routers and reboot their PCs :)
When it went down, a quick traceroute showed the problem to be at BT@Telehouse. Luckily, we retained connectivity to our hosted server (even though most of the rest of the net was unreachable) so a combination of 'ssh -D 1080' and twiddling proxy settings worked around it (note: must look into 'tsocks').
It was a very big outage (despite all the PR flackery seeking to minimise it). And shame on BT, for having a single point failure like that cause such disruption.
This is a very good point;it's almost less what's there, than what's been left out.
As i understand the story so far, some southerm german paper gets this leak and enlists a *Washington DC* organisation (ICIJ) to ensure the relevant informatiion is appropriately publicised.
I'm old enough to recall the controversy over a creationist writing for Scientific American.
Great example is the sinc function - sin(x)/x is continuous; sin(x)/x is 1 with x zero.
This seems well-timed, just two days after David Anderson QC's report calling the UK surveillance powers "undemocratic", "fragmented" and "obscure". Got to keep the populace onside while working towards the next set of even-more intrusive laws, all in their own interest of course!
Cut a couple of old HDDs in half, glue bits of platter to the head arms, add large-area photodiodes to sense position and a bit of hardware and software to read ILDA files. Works really well considering.
pic.
Here's a particularly fine example - a start-up for Death:-
The death you've been waiting for.
Satisfy your niche in the death ecosystem with online branding that’s built by active people for right consumers.
Quote: "Death was prompt, current, and current. Ten out of ten!" - Alexandra Sanders, San Gabriel, California
The word 'criminal' should surely only be applied *after* he has been tried and convicted (and while it seems very likely he would be so convicted, there is presumably some small chance he could be found 'not guilty').
That'll be https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all/.
Sadly, despite being a long-term FF user, it pains me to say it's far easier is to switch to Palemoon; it's a minimal effort and the result is firefox without all the BS (Palemoon being a firefox fork/tracker that values functionality over hipster cool)
Very convenient, and of course we all know programmers develop their code on the only copy of a live database (of which there are no backups)...
Still running the same distro here, from 1999 (and am mercifully free of systemd, pulseaudio, etc). All upgrades have been done by downloading and compiling from source, with the exception of a small number of large programs/drivers (specifically Firefox, Palemoon, OpenOffice, Java, nvidia driver). This 'in-house' distro gets copied onto all new computers, so there's about 50 or 60 running it (including a few laptops). So what doesn't work?
/dev (easier than running udevd), but that's about it. Written a couple of init scripts, fixed a few others (all very simple, maybe a day in total).
In short, not a lot. Occasionally have to 'chmod a+rw' something in
The best bit is, if anything breaks we can fix it - easily.
As to why modern distro's are so complex: "follow the money". If everything was so simple that no-one needed support, well, there goes the business model of all the major distros. So it's not unexpected they put developers in change who like 'elegant' (read complex, bloated, impenetrable and obscure) solutions - it means that end-users pretty much have to fork out for a support contract (or spend a *lot of time* on inhouse admin).
>When was the last time they actually innovated?
You've obviously forgotten CLIPPY! (and Microsoft Bob). Jeez, give them their due.
How does Linux compile his kernel? Certainly I use a parallel make across as many cores as possible (well, up to the point where there's a core for every compilation unit).
The comments above about SS7 being designed without security are spot-on. In the old days, access to the SS7 network was strictly for big players and salesmen with 'extremely customer-friendly' expense accounts. Basically, anyone with access was a big player (with all the baggage that entails).
Really, the issue here is with MAP (an add-on to SS7 to support mobiles). The explosion of mobile means SS7 is no longer just the playing field for national carriers - mobile-only operators came to the party (still all $xbillion players). Then, smaller countries with some interesting networks came on the scene, and rather naughty SS7 traffic started to appear on the network.
Smarter operators (or at least bigger ones who got their fingers burnt) spent money to install gateways that limit and control their exposure (wouldn't you?). The less clueful/more cash-strapped/networks in less-developed countries remain more exposed.
Anyone interested can search for 'SS7 mobility management' ; the <a href="http://www.informit.com/library/content.aspx?b=Signaling_System_No_7&seqNum=116">code is easy</a>, the issue is getting access to the network.
Oh, wait, these days SS7 is being routed over IP now (ever wondered what the <a href="http://lksctp.sourceforge.net/">linux SCTP module</a> is actually for?).
Bullshit.
This software (peddled by my bank for years) claims to protect against keyboard intercepts - on Windows.
Snake oil of the first order.
And C++ doesn't? (cited as it was mentioned as something better).
Any high-level language is an elaboration on the underlying reality. C is closer to whats really going on than its offspring (a simple consequence of it being built at the time we were learning to drive computers effectively).
Really, the argument is about teaching people how to drive when they don't know what's going on under the hood. How many people these days care about that? Like your average programmer, they just want to get from A to B.
The killer advantage of systemd is the money it makes. By integrating this software into our distro, we can be sure that any business using linux will take one look at the complexity, binary logs, and other great features and realise they really need to pay for a support contract. You see, this fixes the problem of the old, really lame (simple, yuk!) systems that have been around for years - anyone with a bit of shell knowledge can learn them in a few minutes, and it's really hard to make money when kids with some computing knowledge can sort system problems out. No, in order to convince customers that support contracts are necessary we need to replace the easy, working stuff with something we invented, something far richer, something that we can integrate into the system and which gives us addtional control. With this approach, we can effectively neutralise all those damn people who can learn how the system works in their spare time. Just make it so complex, only paid professionals can afford to flail about fixing things! As is clear, systemd fits that bill perfectly (along with pulseaudio and a nod to udev). Never mind all those whining ninnies (hey, tell them to go pay for a support contract if they want to use linux). What really matters here is the benefit to the bottom line - just remember, people, complex crap sells support contracts!
In summary, systemd is great on other's people machines - when you'd getting paid by the hour!
Interestingly, there's a report in the Telegraph today suggesting that driverless buses could be on the roads in the UK pretty soon.
On the one hand, this makes sense - the complexity of the problem is reduced with a vehicle following a pre-programmed route.
On the other hand, I'm deeply sceptical - taking the assumption that such vehicles would have to be super-safe to be accepted, I can see a spate of teens having fun baiting autobuses into emergency stops. Oh, and cyclists will totally rule the roads - get in front of a bus and pedal as slow as you like.
Two words: Parallel Construction.
I think we've seen this strategy before.
Basically, it's job security; make it so complex you need to pay for 'support' to make it work.
And the reason this was *scheduled* for news release today?
Because there was a public sector strike too (they knew which would get the TV headlines).
Plus the lame nods about "sunset" clause (yeah right) and reviews of RIPA (yeah, heard that one before).
What do the people of this fine land think?
Well, you only need to start reading the comments to see.
Eww....sweep it under the carpet, clean up the mess, move quietly on with the same old same old. A quiet burial, nothing to see here citizen, move along now, move along.
Here in the southern UK we've had solar LED road studs for years - they are used on some A roads and mark line dividers, road edges and turn-offs in place of the usual cats-eyes. Work pretty well too (though I find them a bit 'stroby', like some vehicle brake lights).
I thought the point was clear, but to attempt to make it more so:
Eric Schmidt stated if there was stuff we didn't want people to know, we shouldn't be doing it. (this was way before the Snowden leaks).
He made it a clear position - don't do anything you don't want to be made public (search back for the old discussion on here about it, as I recall he didn't come out of it well).
So now he's saying the opposite - that we can trust him with stuff we don't people to know (i.e. everything Google knows about us).
Our opinions in how much trust to him are clearly divergent.