My first thought was the clouds version of the y2k defined SCTP protocol

What makes you think our helldesk is under staffed?

If the phone isn't picked up by the second ring, there's a major network fault and the staff know it. That's happened twice in the past three years.

Yeah, best case we've deployed is a Citrix XenApp farm coupled with local computer access. Xen servers control medical software, local desktops are pretty free for email and porn (a surprising amount of porn for medics who are idle). We can control the Xen computers easily enough this way, local computers are wiped if they have a problem via our "perfect world" deployment policy*. It's nice, compromises are minimalistic at best and we segregate the desktops from the servers pretty solidly (with the file/print servers in the middle - "dual homed").

Doctors can do what they want, netops are happy with what they get to lock down, and we even pass a lot of the DSD compliance ratings (not that we're audited, but it's a good benchmark).

*Can't solve your problem in 10 minutes, a further 5 minutes to blow the machine back to standard image. 5 more to reconfigure default accounts and such (which is automated, but we also need to wait for download/ sync of emails etc.). 20 minutes downtime from start of call to end, maximum.

Surely you can control where that goes though - medicare billing is going to be pretty damned obvious (*.medicare.gov.au) and most sites like that have specific IP lists (and port lists) that you can use to lock your firewall down to.

Sure, it's still strictly "internet" access, but it's not like you're going to get a drive by attack when all you allow through the packet filter is access to the specified domains IP ranges and maybe the ISP DNS server to look them up for the software. This is security one-oh-one really, and something we already do for our 4d based medical magic (you know the craptastic software I mean).

Security on a medical computer like this should not be compromised for the sake of a doctors ease of use. Give the XP machine (VM or otherwise) a dedicated IP and do it properly, or stop screwing around and let someone else do it. (Not necessarily directed at you Holi)

I'm always surprised about little things - unencrypted communications is actually kind of an obvious thing to do as far as I am concerned. I mean, screw trying to get a mars rover to reconnect because the clock died and the time is out of sync so the SSL is borked. I'd love to hear from someone who built the communications protocols up, to see if they were just lazy, uneducated, or thinking like the above.

My old boss always cheated - pull a drive from the RAID-1, take it home while the RAID-1 rebuilds with a third drive. That way one is always offsite, and the work is always saved on two drives.

Fortunately (or unfortunately depending how you look at it) he's never had a disk fail mid way through the daily/ weekly rebuild.

We always quote it as "the more disk space you have, the more porn and piracy you save"

Or maybe she gets a lot of hits because of the wavebubble and the arduino tutorials. I'd give good code to see the google-reference-stats to the adafruit sites.

Terabytes of storage go into my... DVD collection... here, so not like I'm adverse to downloading stuff, but this whole concept of "watching it... without commercials" needs to be addressed. The *reason* this stuff is on TV is the advertisements. There is big money in paying for advertisements during certain TV hours, and this - combined with government funding - is how free to air TV works. Downloading the content detracts from that.

It's actually not that bad, so long as when the survey team comes along you check the TV guide and then say "why yes I watch Firefly every night at 7" because that's when it's on, that way the advertisement keeps going, and the programs end up on commercial TV. Sort of like not-adblocking *cough cough* divxden.

Every now and then you get to witness true artistry. This isn't it, but it's close enough I'm going to fire up the ol' dot matrix and put that on my dojo wall

Also it's fucking hot out here. As in - my tyres got sticky in the car park hot out here.

Then what is the point of having XBMC for my movies?

I mount and unmount the various age-shares automatically via cron - that way the teenagers can't even watch movies during the day when they have other things to do - but the smallest can watch finding nemo whenever they have free time and a movie is their option. They can see the movies there (no porn in folders!) but can't play them if the source files aren't there.

Considering the rules in Australia allow for something like 10% misread (so you are going 10% slower than the speedo says), I think that yes, he is claiming that exactly. I had my speedo re-tuned to match my GPS, but it was reading about 6kph over - doing 106 per speedo was actually 100 per road.

I regularly make the run along the B400 to see the family (regularly - about once every month). I always plug in the GPS, but it's more for watching my speed and that I always turn it on than anything else. Recently decided to let it have its head, figured I could always turn around if necessary - shaved a full half hour off the otherwise 12 hour trip (you know, when there is a blue and white behind you :P) because it took me off the highway.

I'm not saying your friend was correct - generally I will stick to the highway anyway, but this crap about lots of traffic is pretty rubbish - at 3 in the morning even the B12 is pretty dead, despite it being a main run for trucks doing the Sydney/Albury to Adelaide trip, you could be bleeding out for hours before someone sees you. It's not quite the M31, despite being remote that one you'd be hard pressed to bury a body before someone drove past, but major roads in Australia can still be pretty "cut off" from it all.

All that said, if you're not at least checking a gregories or your google maps before you go, you're a fucking moron to do anything big out here with no prep and nothing but your phone.