Properly documented policies could have helped in this situation.

A policy should have been in place that defined who the business owner (management) of the resource was (network in this case). It is the responsibility of management to ensure that they define who has a business need for access (and have it documented), and it's the responsibility of the tech grunt to run the system (or network) for the business owner.

The key point is that as a non-manager type person, if management says jump, get it in writing and jump. Management is ultimately responsible for the system and network to the business. If management has made bad choices or decisions, it's their fault and if the request or actions leading up to the failure are documented, that admin can refer to that.

All organizations should at least have a documented policy of who can have access to resources and that the business owner of the resource can be easily determined. The business owner needs to be someone who is legally responsible to the organization (i.e. an executive, or someone high enough in management).

As a system administrator, you should insist on having this documented just to protect yourself. If you suspect that there is some management decisions that could jeopardize the operation of the system, document it, report it to the business owner and let them make the final decision (with documentation).

In the case of Terry Childs, had this been documented, he would have been able to either say that the person who was requesting the passwords did not have a business need (and would be able to back that statement with documentation), -or- if the person did have authority to have access, he could have simply have documented why it was a bad decision, hand the passwords over and walk away from it.

Yes there is a pride element. You've spent years building up a system and making it shine, but unless you are running your own business, you are not the legal owner of that system.

The only way that I would get rid of my Model M Keyboard (and the stash of spares), would be if someone came out with a keyboard that had the same key action/feel as the old IBM 327x keyboards (which you could use as an anti-tank barrier). The Selectric keyboard had just about the same tactile feel as the 3270s, not quite the same, but close. so yes -- I fully understand your feeling about your keyboard... they can have my Model M keyboard when they can pry it from my cold dead hands.

This really isn't anything new. Knuth didn't get it "wrong". He based his analysis of the algorithms assuming a system that had dedicated memory and where each instruction of code ran uninterrupted and in a consistent fashion.

Certain memory access patterns are "bad" under a system that uses virtual memory, especially when the base system is memory constrained. This has been a well known fact for decades. In fact one of the maybe lost arts of programming was ensuring reference locality, not only of data, but also of code. It was a common practice to ensure that often called subroutines or functions where either located in same page of memory as the calling code, or to group all the often called functions into as few pages of memory as possible.

Basically, every address space has what is sometimes called a working set, a set of pages that have been recently referenced. There are three things that can happen with a working set. It can remain the same size, it can grow and it can shrink. If it remains the same, there is no additional load to the operating system. If it shrinks, there is no additional load to the operating system, in fact this can help a memory constrained system. A growing working set however an lead to a thrashing system. Some operating systems will monitor working set sizes and can adjust dispatch priorities and execution classes depending on what the recent working set size history is. An application with a growing working set may very will find itself at the end of the queue way behind applications that have a static working set size.

Take for an example the following very simple program

static string buffer[256][4096]
while not infile.eof() do
infile.readinto(buffer[0],256)
outfile.writefrom(buffer[0],256)
end

Here the working set of this program will be very small. Ignoring the file i/o routines, all the code and data references will be limited to basically a fixed section of memory. From a virtual memory stand point, this is a "well behaved" application.

Now take the following

static string buffer[256][4096]
while not infile.eof() do
bindex = random(0,4095)
infile.readinto(buffer[ bindex ], 256)
outfile.wwritefrom(buffer[ bindex ], 256)
end

Functionally the same program, however the data reference pattern here is all over the place. The working set will be large, since many of the buffer pages will be referenced. The program never stays long on the same memory location.

Finally take the following example

static string buffer[256][4096]
infile.readinto(buffer[0], 256* 4096) // fill the entire buffer
for i = 0 to 4095 do
numbercrunch( buffer[i] )
end

Here there will be an initially huge working set as the data is read in. However, the working set will shrink to a reasonable size once the numbercrunching phase starts since the data references will all be localized to a small block of memory.

Understand (and thanks for the fleshed out details).. it's a nasty event that is putting a strain on the environment.

People on both sides of the argument should at least realize that they don't have all the "answers". The folks that are saying "it's no big deal", need to realize the concentration and location of the spill will have a local impact to the environment and the local economy, that even though there are natural processes that "spill oil into the environment", this event is straining the system. The folks that are saying "it's the end of the world", need to understand that there are some natural processes that can have similar impacts, and that in the very long run the environment will recover (just not in the time scale that one might expect). I would say instead of arguing or putting heads into sand, people should just get in and "clean it up" to the best of our ability, and make sure that reasonable safeguards are put in place to ensure future events such as this can't happen.

Here is a study from the early 90's showing how much natural seepage goes into the Golf of Mexico. http://www.epa.gov/ttn/chief/conference/ei10/intemissions/marse.pdf (PDF)

Basically the natural seepage in the northern Golf of Mexico it's about 120,000 barrels a year. For the entire Golf of Mexico it's about 625-1,875 barrels a day (or 2.5 to 6.9 x 10^5 barrels a year).

The "problem" I suspect with the current oil well is the localization of the spill, and thus higher concentrations of the oil. Kind of like trying to eat a teaspoon of hot sauce directly versus adding a teaspoon of hot sauce to a bowl of chili. It's the same amount of the stuff, just dispersed over a larger area.

More power to the Museum and it's director.

I just wish that the US population would get over the general reaction to anything is to sue someone.

One of my favorite quotes.

Different fuel, but basically the same idea as a carbide cannon which has been around for at least 100 years. In fact there was a patent from the early 1900's (US 874,952) on an improved gas gun.

So, basically all that is new is the recharge time and the decibels.

The evolution of VM from CP/67 to z/VM has resulted in some of the virtualization function being pushed down into the hardware.

With the introduction of XA architecture in the late 80's, IBM moved some of the virtualization technology down into the hardware, they created a new instruction, SIE - Start Interpretive Execution that could tap into this facility. This facility ended up being the heart of both LPARs and VM/XA (which grew into current z/VM). Conceptually the SIE instruction, or the LPAR facility saves the current processor context, and starts a new context. The "guest" system (or the LPAR) now runs in this new context until some condition has been met (e.g. certain timer pops, certain state changes, etc, as defined by the meta-system (z/VM or the base system managing the LPARs). The movement of this function down into hardware was a logical extension of what used to be called hardware VM assists in pre-XA days.

Basically the base hardware provides LPARs (in fact for quite some time IBM mainframes can only run in LPAR mode, even if one has only one system image). LPARs allow sharing of the physical processors, sharing of physical I/O devices, and partitioning of physical memory. With an LPAR you cannot exceed the physical resources available, meaning that you cannot define an LPAR image with more processors then are physically available, or give an LPAR image more memory then is physically available. This is where z/VM comes in.

z/VM provides the ability to virtualize the physical resources. You can define a VM guest with more memory then is physically available, or more processors then are physically available. In addition z/VM can provide virtualized I/O devices, or provide more fine grained partitioning of physical devices (e.g. carving a disk volume into a collecting of smaller volumes in what is called mini-disks -- which are not the same as a disk partition).

The whole purpose of comments is to explain the code so that future maintainers (including the author of the code) can easily understand what is going on. If done right, a maintainer can pick up a module and come up to speed as to what the code does, why it does it, and any thing else that might trip them up. Comments need to capture the developers thoughts from when the code was being designed and written. The reasoning and ideas behind an algorithm that took several months to design cannot be truly captured with a 3 line comment and 25 lines of code.

I feel that comments can be broken into four types:

1. Boiler plate front matter. These are the comments that are required by the coding standards of the shop. Usually contains copyright notices, author's name, list of changes, etc.
2. Specification and reference comments. A list of the external references, such as the formal specification for the code, a bibliography for the algorithms used, etc.
3. Block comments. These should describe the intent of a larger block of code. The reader should be able to take all the block comments from a program and have a good understanding what the entire program does. Block comments should describe the what and why. Block comments should also describe any gotchas, or special conditions that the maintainer needs to be aware of.
4. Line comments. Should describe the purpose of a small number of statements. Line comments should not merely echo the action of the code itself, but describe what is happening and how the particular action relates to the rest of the program.

   i += 4; /* Increment i by 4 */ BAD comment
   
   i += 4; /* Ignore the first 4 fields */ Better

You really don't understand what a monopoly is do you?

the USB IF acts to maintain the USB standard - and it features vendor ID codes that are assured (by the specification) to be unique to each individual vendor who uses them.

They *must* act to prevent other companies from just deciding to use a Vendor ID *that does not belong to them* (read: have not licenced to use because the ID has been licenced by someone else, namely Apple).

How on earth did this get +1 informative?

The sole reason the USB IF exists in the first place is to prevent (or correct) issues like this arising, when one company breaks the spec for their own ends.

I disagree. Leaving aside the squatters and ad-pumpers (I wish we could :-) the "ordinary user" should not be able to hide their identity. Hiding physical address details is an unfortunate but acceptable security restriction today; but hiding email, phone, and other contact data is just wrong. It's abused by thousands of companies to prevent people contacting them when their poxy products fail, or to hide their true ownership and identity. Registering a personal domain is one thing; registering a domain as a business should bring with it the responsibility to publish valid contact information and keep it up to date. It should be illegal for registrars to hide the identity of their business registrants.

Tesla actually demonstrated it. He just never got the chance to scale it up. So.. before going around and saying that this has just been invented, go check Tesla's patents.

Several years ago I read (and wish I remembered where) a technique that I thought was quite interesting. It was a rule based authentication scheme. Each account on a system would have it's own set of rules that only the user would know. For example.

Here I might have set up the rule to say whenever there is a mathematical equation, with an even result and it's in the morning enter "cat", if it's in the afternoon enter "river", if the result is odd and it's monday then enter "blue", tuesday enter ... you get the idea.

The response has nothing to do mathematically with the question, but relies on the fact that I know what the proper response should be. And even is someone was watching my response. Each time I log in a different rule would be used (maybe the next question would be "what color are roses?")

Personally if I were to make the decisions on hiring someone, and give the choice between a person who knew only one language inside and out and a person who was exposed to 4 or 5 different language but needed a quick peek at a reference book to make sure they got the syntax right or some such, I would pick the 2nd person without even blinking.

You see, to the first person, he has only one tool in his tool box (a hammer), and to him everything will look like a nail.

Programming is so much more then just simply banging out a bunch of lines of code. It's looking at the requirements and picking the best tool for the job. In addition things are never static. A little tool may be needed and python may just fit the bill, then there will be that web application that needs enhanced and that is written in PHP, and the boss just dropped by and said that corporate just got a new application in and it has it's own scripting interface and it needs in interface to the application that you are responsible for.

Sure... if you are working on a big project, that project may have decided to use just one language and you will spend the next 3 years looking at java, but knowing how a computer really works (from that assembly class - even though you've never code a single line of assembly) you can make some wise decisions on how to implement something, or maybe just maybe you might come back and say - you know right here it would be beneficial to call out to a routine written in C because Java just isn't going to cut it right here.

Ah... the constitution does not enumerate the rights that we have, but lists what rights the government has. The bill of rights explicitly spells out those things that the government cannot take away. The 9th and 10th amendments spell this out