Posts by Federal

Virtualization twisted devs, cloud and SaaS made them monsters

SaaS Savings are partly from reduced features

The software development process generally follows the "the last 10% of the work takes 50% of the development time" rule. That's where the unique requirements involving customizations and complex data integrations take place. They're hard for developers but greatly simplify work processes for end users.

After the switch to SaaS end users are told "our workflow optimization (to get the overall function to fit into the cloud app) don't allow for that feature in this release."

So the burden of extra work, which was eliminated as a cost of a couple months effort for developers and testers falls onto end users. 2 man months of effort saved at the cost of 5 minutes per week for each of 5,000 people.

If it were only one function set in one app it wouldn't matter, but (at least in our case) the migration of multiple functions to cloud SaaS adds about 2 hours per week to each staff member's workload. Times 5,000 for at least a couple years.

Management claims they've cut IT costs through "Workflow Optimization" and moving to the "the cloud", but staff wind up with less time to work productively and being aggravated by being forced to perform tedious workarounds.

But that's considered progress in a buzzword world.

So, you're 'ISO 27001 accredited', huh? Just saying so doesn't cut it

Paid for "independent" certifications have their limits

Like a prison in which the guards are hired, paid by, and can be fired by, the inmates, the quality of the guarding will be limited. From time to time, there will be escapes.

This applies to ISO certifications and FEDRAMP, too, where the certifiers must market their services through sales pitches to the ultimate recipients of the "independent" certification.

Intel and pals chuck money at another Fibre Channel killer

Like driving an airplane on the interstate

NVMe is a very high speed, very low latency protocol that is optimized for on-board short distance data transfers. Just like you can use an airplane to drive down the highway, you can use this protocol over longer distances by putting bridge circuitry at each end of the connection compensate for the different physics of communicating over longer distances. But now you've slowed it down and added costs - like clipping the wings and tail off the airplane to make it fit through overpasses. It would go really fast over some stretches of the highway but then have to slow way down (go through bridge chips) in other places.

TCP/IP is a great protocol for long distances and NVMe, QuickPath, and Hypertransport are great protocols for short distances. Fiberchannel and infiniband are great protocols for medium distances. Many attempts have been made over the years to jam sone of these protocols into different roles and they've generally wound up providing similar (or worse) performance at higher cost (like FC over IP).

Maybe this time it will be different.

Dropbox gets all up in your kernel with Project Infinite. Cue uproar

They need to be sure the ransomware gets ALL your filles

Make sure it's fully attached and accessible as a "local" set of files.

Wouldn't want the encryption daemon to miss any cloud based backups!

Fibre Channel's looking a bit flat. Bad news for these three firms

Re: Eliminating tape

I don't see how a spinning disk is going to be as reliable, much less more reliable, than a tape locked up in a vault. I will speculate that you meant to propose that archived files be moved from disk to disk over time, such that the archives are always on a fairly fresh set of disks. But that has some issues, too. Generally if you need to archive it, there's at least some sensitivity associated with it, so it has to be encrypted, tracked, and limits placed on its duplication. So now you have a key, algorithm and location problem for 20 year old files to deal with (which I agree is probably more easily solved than trying to read a 20 year old tape). But it's not a non-issue, either. You also have 20 years of a bunch of files being on-line, copied, copied again, etc. all the while being exposed to the various intentional and accidental gremlins that seem to go after neglected files over time.

It's never easy, and I don't think that there's a single solution that best fits all problems. I wouldn't be quite so quick to dismiss tape, blue-ray, or non-spinning hard disk cartridge archives. Like just leaving it on-line, the specialized archive solutions have their place. And you can always store a couple of tape drives alongside your tapes in the data vault - that way there's no need to go looking when it comes time to do a restore 20 years later. Your encryption keys may not be as easily found.

...now, whatever did I do with the combination to that old tape vault we filled up 15 years ago and haven't accessed since?

Samsung sued over 'lackadaisical' Android security updates

In all fairness

My 3 year old Samsung Note II had a patch from Samsung for the stagefright vulnerability - that was pushed out via an OTA update from T-Mobile.

Which is better than some other mfgs. Are these guys running into a carrier issue rather than an mfg. issue?

Tesla still burning cash: each car loses $4,000

Then there's the problem with their N0x emissions

Depending on where you recharge it, in the US, it emits on average 250% of the maximum allowable N0x per mile. And it can be 10 times that depending on how you drive and where you recharge it.

Sooner or later they'll get called on it. The VW cheating has everyone else's cheating being looked at.

It's BACK – Stagefright 2.0: Zillions of Android gadgets can be hijacked by MP3s, movie files

The fix is obvious and elegant

Include a stagefright exploit in the daily Google Doodle. Patched phones would be unaffected but other phones will be pwned and accessed at root level, without the need for carrier intervention or jailbreaking/rooting the phone. The exploit will check all potentially vulnerable files. When any such file is found, the exploit will download and install a patched replacement, then reboot the phone.

Everyone goes to Google's home page once in a while, so there would be universal implementation of the patches.

:-)

BlackBerry emits Android mobe as biz goes down the Priv

Android phones have all sorts of selling points (and have sold well, because of the that) but often fall short on security. If RIM can address that weakness, and the phone is otherwise comparable to other Android phones, they might have a winner.

Their biggest competition may come from Windows phone, which also claims some enterprise security features over typical Android phones.

Apple seems to operate in its own segment - I don't see iOS users moving to Blackberry, more secure or not.

11 MILLION VW cars used Dieselgate cheatware – what the clutch, Volkswagen?

Re: Goodbye DISEASEel!!

Diesels are thermodynamically more efficient than gasoline engines - typically by about 10 to 12% and you can get a little more usable diesel out of a barel of oil, with less effort, than you can get gasoline from the same barrel. Take two otherwise identical cars and put a diesel engine in one and a gas engine in the other and the diesel will use about 20% fewer gallons of fuel while emitting less C02. (diesel has about 10% more energy per gallon than gasoline, on top of its higher efficiency).

Modern diesels are generally cleaner (usually a lot cleaner) in terms of Hydrocarbon and VOC emissions partly due to excess oxygen that's inherent to the combustion process making easier to burn everything up. They're also generally a lot dirtier (especially VWs!) in terms of N0x emissions, again because of that "extra" oxygen and the high temperatures associated with high thermodynamic efficiency.

Re: Software, mileage, and urea

It's not just one way, it's probably the only way.

On the 2009 to 2014 models the DPF is built into the catalytic converter that's built into the exhaust manifold - it's a $4,000+ job to replace it, and running enough EGR through the engine to reduce N0x by the magnitude required will make DPF replacement needed more often than oil changes.

Retrofitting a urea injection system, new engine controls, and adding a N0x catalyst to the exhaust system will cost them $2,500 or more, per car, but they'll only have to do it once.

Adding a DEF tank, controls, pump, and N0x catalyst is the only thing they can do. If anything else were even close to feasible, they'd have done it years ago. They may be stupid and arrogant but not stupid and arrogant enough to not make changes to the control settings if that were all it took to solve this problem.

They'll probably have to put the tank and pump where the spare tire is - they might have to provide new run-flat tires in addition to the Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) system. SCR + Lean N0x Trap (LNT - which the car already has) is how BMW passes the tests and still gets good mileage and performance.

Like paying huge amounts for Salesforce? Don't read this

It's not per year, it's per month

$1,500 per person, per year for base CRM

$3,000 per person, per year, for full CRM

http://www.salesforce.com/crm/editions-pricing.jsp

...make sure you read the fine print before you sign up.

:-)

Oracle brews perpetual, all-you-can-eat database licence

That not how Salesforce Licensing works

It's not perpetual all you can eat. You have to pay for each user each month - it's a dream come true for Oracle, and one they're trying to move to by selling Oracle Cloud Services.

Salesforce runs only on Salesforce servers giving them total control over whatever part of your business you move onto Salesforce. There's no need for them to audit your software use - they can monitor it minute by minute and shut you off if you don't pay up.

Google gives away 100 PETABYTES of storage to irritate AWS

It's not cheap

A 4TB WD NAS rated (Red) drive goes for $150.

At 0.01 / per gb/ per month for 5 years, Google will sell you the same drive for 0.01 x 12 x 4,096 x 5 (cents times months times gb times years) = $2,457.60

Plus I/O charges etc. and what if they decide to get out of the nearline storage business?

For nearline storage, the drives don't have to be kept powered up. And you need to keep a sysadmin to make sure the stuff gets to google or gets to a local drive and to keep track of what's where.

The "savings" are smoke and mirrors.

But ... but iOS 9 could BLOCK my Ad-Block, dev squeals

NoScript on Firefox

Browsing any other way is Russian Roulette. And even with NoScript, some risk remains and common sense is vital.

But it's hugely helpful. The first few hours of whitelisting pages and scripts you trust to use JS are a little annoying, but after that it's barely noticeable. And it forces you to consider what you've actually gotten yourself into by clicking on that link.

It basically makes the web a series of harmless, static pages, instead of a snake pit of interacting exploits.

JavaScript CPU cache snooper tells crooks EVERYTHING you do online

Re: cat /proc/cpuinfo

Nice call! Maybe they see that it was accessed from L1 timing, then read the data values remaining in L2 or 3. Intel has long traded off some cache duplication for the benefits of simplicity (and speed) in cache access. They used to have lower associativity, too (for similar tradeoffs) but now mostly match AMD. They'd have to remap the cache addresses to ones local to the process without repopulating the values to get around memory space isoloation. I think CFLUSH would let them do it.

Wow! Inclusive cache as security issue! And it simply ends any notion of VM isolation. A version of this that runs on servers could be bad news.

Dive! Dive! Dive! Imation submarine barrels down toward rocky seabed

Too bad - they're the very best of the Tier 2's

We've used Nexsan units in small quantities for years - their reliability has been stunningly good. They don't have all the features of NetApp and EMC, but they somehow are able to predict drive failures during testing and ship only drives that don't fail. We've had units in the past that used some of the seagate drive models that had a half life of about 18 months in everything else that went almost 7 years in a pair of Nexsan 18 drive boxes before the first failure. To this day I don't get how they're able to do it.

Microsoft comes right out and says backup software is dead

One thing cloud storage is NOT, is less expensive

Cloud costs far more than local storage, but there are many reasons it is a good choice, under some circumstances (very granular increments is one).

But compare the cost of very basic Amazon S3 storage to buying your own:

Enterprise quality NAS / SAN rated drives go for about $50/TB and are warranted for 5 years. Put 24 in a chassis with controller and software and compare that cost to even the very least expensive cloud storage. Now consider the bandwidth (yours and the cloud provider's) charges and I/O charges for accessing the data. S3 pricing is here: http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/

Per GB, cloud costs at least 10 times as much as local storage (up to 100 times or more).

Cloud has lots of benefits, but the "it's cheaper" argument is simply not true. And you still need an IT staff to set up connections to it and to manage it.

Customer sues Nimbus Data for 'breach of contract' over arrays

It appears it's just the one item

It looks like the only function that's not available is the ability to upgrade HALO software and "observe controller failover." Perhaps Nimbus hasn't worked out how to seamlessly failover through an upgrade on an active system. I'm not familiar with Nimbus/HALO, but it's going to be an operation that's got to execute carefully. If Nimbus' configuratin is active/active, you'd have to first force all operations over to one controller, then upgrade the other, then force operations (these are live, active I/O controller sessions) over to the newly updated controller then upgrade the second controller, then go back to splitting operations between the two controllers.

Our NetApps do this OK, but I'll admit to being impressed by it generally working without much drama. Oracle can't support it with many of its database patches, even in a RAC - you have to shut down the database to patch. (admittedly disk I/O is much less complex than database transactions).

'Copyrighted' Java APIs deserve same protection as HARRY POTTER, Oracle tells court

Re: If Oracle want APIs copyrighted

Looks like IBM (home to Codd and where SQL was invented) already took care of that:

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/dzichelp/v2r2/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.db2z10.doc.apsg%2Fsrc%2Ftpc%2Fdb2z_dynamicsqlapp.htm

All those API description pages are copyrighted by IBM 1983, and there are almost certainly earlier copyrights.

IT'S ALIVE! IT'S ALIVE! Google's secretive Omega tech just like LIVING thing

Had to happen sooner or later...

From Heinlen's classic, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress."

www<.>is<.>wayne<.>edu/MNISSANI/RevolutionarysToolkit/TheMoonIsAHarshMistress.pdf

When Mike was installed in Luna, he was pure thinkum, a flexible logic "High Optional, Logical, Multi Evaluating Supervisor, Mark IV, Mod. L" a HOLMES FOUR. He computed ballistics for pilotless freighters and controlled their catapult. This kept him busy less than one percent of time and Luna Authority never believed in idle hands. They kept hooking hardware into him - decision action boxes to let him boss other computers, bank on bank of additional memories, more banks of associational neural nets, another tubful of twelve digit random numbers, a greatly augmented temporary memory. Human brain has around ten to the tenth neurons. By third year Mike had better than one and a half times that number of neuristors. And woke up.

Am not going to argue whether a machine can "really" be alive, "really" be self aware. Is a virus self aware? Nyet. How about oyster? I doubt it. A cat? Almost certainly. A human? Don't know about you, tovarishch, but I am. Somewhere along evolutionary chain from macromolecule to human brain self awareness crept in. Psychologists assert it happens automatically whenever a brain acquires certain very high number of associational paths. Can't see it matters whether paths are protein or platinum.

("Soul?" Does a dog have a soul? How about cockroach?)

Quantum hands out 190 pink slips... quits making own tape library

A real shame

We've been using Quantum's libraries for a while now. They're at least as reliable as the 2 other vendors we worked with before switching to Quantum and were quicker to get fixed when the inevitable mechanical glitch showed up after a couple years of use. We've got a bunch of their libraries in production.

I wished they'd just raised prices - we certainly would have accepted an increase after the good experience we've had with their products.

So, where to now? HP? Overland? Qualstar?

Geeks and Nerds caught on film lacking geeky nerdiness

It's not always that easy

We had a machine that would crash randomly under heavy load. It could go weeks without having a problem. But if you ran memtest overnight it would show an occasional error.

We replaced the memory and it reduced the frequency of the problem, but didn't end it. The new memory was still showing an occasional error (that was noted as sometimes being a fale positive) when running memtest overnight so we replaced it again.

It turned out that the problem was the hard disk. The electronics on the drive, I suppose. Replacing the hard disk eliminated the problem. The only symptom was memory errors - the hard drive had appeared fine. We replaced the drive so we wouldn't have to worry about losing the user's work. The machine has been flawless for years (with the replaced disk drive).

Never saw that problem before, haven't seen it since. It had 4 very experienced IT staff baffled (including me) for weeks.

Literally hundreds of millions of "parts" need to work perfectly for a PC to work. A problem transistor on one subsytem (motherboard chip) can surface as an error on another.(video card). Or hard disk and memory, apparently - that one still has me somewhat baffled.

But this stuff isn't always easy to figure out. We probably spent a couple $k in staff time diagnosing a bad $100 disk.

This stuff isn't always that easy.