If we're being pedantic, what part of "quasi-SAN" didn't you understand?

And a "shitload of hard drives accessed via iSCSI" IS a SAN. A SAN is nothing but a (special) network card in a PC hooked up via a cable to another (special) network card in another PC with "a shitload of disks" attached to it. If you use iSCSI, you can remove the "special" part...

The fact that the industry likes to make this complicated and expensive is just another example of how screwed up the industry is...

Just to comment on iSCSI a hair.

I have a client for which I set up an openFIler iSCSI box. The box connects to an unmanaged dumb GigE switch. Four iMacs connect to the same switch. Client uses FinalCut to access video assets on two MicroNet 4TB external storage enclosures. Each of the four iMacs accesses two drives in the enclosures configured as a 1.8TB volume.

Been running fine for, I dunno, two years? Box blew a power supply this past month, I grabbed a second box of similar make and model, reinstalled openFiler, attached the enclosures, ran a script someone on the Net created to reload the volumes, and reconfigured the iSCSI. Back in business in a couple hours..

openFiler is great, utterly reliable, In this case, running over the client's regular network has been no problem, since the path is box->switch->clients all on the same switch and his network doesn't really move that much stuff around in normal use since the twenty machines are mostly production machines.

I'm thinking of setting up an openFiler based backup server for the video department - in that case, I'll use a separate GigE network based on separate NICs and a separate GigE switch - although I'm not sure what I'll do about the iMacs (GigE USB, I guess, if there are drivers - someone on the Net has done it). The rest of the department is tower Windows PCs.

A Twitter contact pointed me to this article over at Jaded Security. There's something shady about this guy Karim Hijazi who allegedly was extorted.

Who is to blame for the success of the latest round of attacks?
http://jadedsecurity.net/2011/06/04/who-is-to-blame-for-the-success-of-the-latest-round-of-attacks/

None of whom were harmed in any way, as admitted by just about everyone including the Pentagon.

Good points: if they're working from Asia their labor rates for cold calling are going to be low. And yeah, social engineering in person works better than an online scam.

I wonder if they also use the excuse that "we're from your ISP, we've noticed your machine is sending spam, so we need to clean your machine for you". That would work with a lot of people. Sending emails allegedly from the ISP with "free antivirus software" as an attachment probably would work even better. I haven't heard of that being done but it seems like an obvious approach.

You mean you don't actually install a fake AV, pull half their RAM and leave child porn on the machine as well?

So how evil are you? Eh, not so much.

You're right. Despite claims to the contrary, home users REALLY hate paying for computer repair and only do it when they're desperate - which is why their machines are in such a mess when we get to them.

In fact, corporate users don't like it either. For some reason, there's some myth that all these boxes with moving parts in the drives and high heat output are supposed to be "un-breakable" for the five years or more people keep them.

I got one client still running a ten-to-fifteen year old Windows 95 box, for God's sakes! He absolutely will not upgrade that box because it runs a specific software he needs and he doesn't want to learn anything newer. It's already burned out at least one power supply and he lucked out that it didn't fry his motherboard.

And it's not just scammers charging low rates. I charge low rates and don't scam anyone. There's just a ton of people doing PC repair work and the competition is fierce. Add that customers don't like paying a lot per hour and it's hard to justify higher rates, especially for poorer home users. It's a bad business model but poor people need PC support, too, and just can't afford Geek Squad rates.

"Personally I don't get the drive to be dishonest for these places."

It's simple. There are two main reasons: 1) competition, or 2) the guy is just dishonest by nature.

In the case of competition, there are two reasons: 1) a lot of out of work techies go into computer support - I did - and they charge less than someone running a store with overhead; and 2) the economy sucks and as I've mentioned elsewhere people hate paying for computer repair so it's not that easy to make a decent living fixing PCs unless a) you're very good, and/or b) you have good marketing skills and thus a lot of corporate clients as opposed to home users.

Marketing skills and PC repair skills tend not to go together in the same person - it sure doesn't in me.

In the case of 2), dishonesty is common in every profession. By definition, most of the people in any profession are doing less well than the people at the top of the profession. This tends to bring out dishonesty. The lower down the totem pole you go, the more dishonesty you find. Since basic PC repair (as opposed to more high end computer consulting) is basically a blue collar, low education, no respect type of job, it's no surprise people who end up in it tend to be dishonest.

On Windows, it's called CCleaner.

But it doesn't help if you have ten gig worth of porn in your Documents folder.

Switch his wife to your Web site, obviously. And make sure you note the Web sites and phone numbers of those hookers.

What kind of nerd are you? :-)