In other late-breaking news today, it was revealed that the Pope considers himself to be Catholic...

It means it's time for both parties to go to work for the people of the country again. Quit targeting people for political persecution and revenge, start working together. Don't target the other side because you disagree with them.

Actually, several of the major US cable companies recently phased out analog signals from their networks. That alone is probably driving a percentage of the antenna sales given the increased cost of connecting additional TVs. Plus, there's no more "free cable" loophole for internet subscribers. I'm sure there's probably a few smaller cable companies out there still running analog signals.

Genesis 6:3

Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”

Ok, problem solved. Quick, some tell Elisabetta Barbi, Francesco Lagona, Marco Marsili, James W. Vaupel, and Kenneth W. Wachter! With all the free time they'll have now, maybe they can come up with a formula that explains why humans need sleep.

We wouldn't need to discuss this if the medical device manufacturers stopped using consumer-grade wireless radios and protocols. But of course that would cost more money to research and develop, yada yada yada. There's a cheap solution to this problem, however. Dispense with the tinfoil hats and go for a full-blown tinfoil body wrap. Problem solved!

Why is this modded offtopic? Ah yes, because some define "Trustworthy Computing" as exclusively meaning a platform that has gained trust by the user. But you have to look at the whole picture. Security was always the first "pillar" of the "Trustworthy Computing" initiative. Protected execution and secure I/O were features Microsoft desperately wanted to incorporate into their code - the thinking being if the code couldn't be modified in ways the programmers never intended, then users *could* completely trust it. Palladium (or Next-Generation Secure Computing Base) was hailed as the holy grail of locked down code, and "Trustworthy Computing" was one of the buzzwords used by Microsoft to market it. That is, until the anti-TCP campaign made it not cool to use those terms anymore. Why not take a stroll over to Microsoft's website circa 2002 and let me know what you find: http://www.microsoft.com/resou...

This is great news on one hand, but a sad reminder of how some of the core ideas behind this "technology" have advanced. I remember when the first bits of information on "Palladium", as it was called at the time, started to leak out. There was a lot of talk about how software companies could lock down their applications to restrict their use or make them disappear from the device on a whim. Also there was speculation about how the government could use it to track and watch everything done on the device. Well, look at what we have today - applications and data stored in datacenters that the government has easy access to. Downloaded apps can be disabled for reasons as silly as trademark disputes. And social networking websites are making billions tracking the activities of their users and selling the data.

Fortunately, some of the other nefarious goals have not come to pass. We still are able to use whatever device we want to connect to the internet and are not limited to a walled garden. We also can transfer media files between (most) devices without needing a license for each device. And encryption capabilities are easier to implement and for the most part protect our privacy instead of protecting the software companies' "intellectual property." We definitely owe a debt of gratitude to groups like the EFF and Free Software Foundation for standing up to the lobbyists that pushed the trusted computing platform.

Actually, the link does not apply since the unfortunate victim in that case jumped off an 80ft cliff into a quarry. I am not aware of any account where the original challenge, a bucket of cold water to the head, actually caused the participant to expire and go to meet his maker. http://www.snopes.com/horrors/...

Anon - Why base your opinion on an experience back in 2008? This is six years later and the product has matured since then. The Zenoss Core (http://www.zenoss.org) open source project is bigger than it's ever been, it is very reliable, and is used by many large corporations today.

OP - For what it's worth, any open source monitoring software should play just fine with OpenVPN. However, the monitoring feature set should be simplified into a single interface, you don't want to have to be fixing scripts and maintaining the software all the time.

I actually used to deploy OpenVPN + Zenoss for remote site monitoring. In my case I needed to monitor multiple systems at the customer premises (using Zenoss Enterprise/Service Dynamics for the remote collector integration), but you should have it a bit easier since you only have one server to monitor. I found configuring OpenVPN to be a bit of a challenge, but once that part was done the rest was a piece of cake. It will be a lot of work with the sheer volume of 500 clients (with that amount of traffic you might even need to break it into two OpenVPN endpoints) but I'm sure you are already aware of that.

I would say definitely take a closer look at Zenoss Core. A side note, Zenoss Service Dynamics is their enterprise product with advance features, but for you the "technology stack" needs only to consist of Zenoss Core (free) + OpenVPN. Set up OpenVPN as you described so that the clients deployed on your remote servers can connect back through https - as long as they have an internet connection no holes need to be poked through your customer's firewalls. Drop Zenoss on the OpenVPN endpoint box(s). Then use the OpenVPN IPs to monitor the servers. For each individual server, configure the SNMP string if Linux, or set up WMI if windows (no need to configure traps, Zenoss polls the boxes at specific intervals). Use the wizard on the Zenoss web interface to add the host and model it. Away you go, you can now see the events in the Zenoss console for everything from ping status to CPU utilization. Events go to the console which you can monitor, or you can easily set up e-mail alerts to trigger. For example, say one of the disks throws a SMART error; trigger an e-mail you so you can ship the customer a new disk to install just like NetApp does.

As I mentioned, you can definitely use Zabbix or some other variant to do the monitoring part. I researched and played with many monitoring solutions (commercial and free) before I settled on Zenoss. What made the difference for me was that I found I was spending way too much time learning the quirks of the software (e.g. Nagios - config file to add a client, really! SolarWinds - Agent installation required, really!) and not enough time actually deploying monitoring to the targets. Good luck, hopefully this info helps you find the right fit for your environment!

This doesn't surprise me considering how far removed the US government is from understanding her primary function - to protect her own citizens. What's to stop them from declaring a leader of a political movement as dangerous, having “recently” been involved in “activities” posing a threat of a violent attack - for example, declaring that the government has no right to interfere with private enterprises, or even supporting 2nd amendment rights?

I used a little hyperbole to make a point about the passwords being a backdoor. Your argument is valid, absolutely; but that assumes The Man is efficient and crafty - none of which are generally equated with governments these days. This is a lazy man's backdoor, through a gate that appears to be normal both inside and out. On the other hand, a black hat implementing your proposed covert SSH backdoor would fit right in line with their known weapons of fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency.

Just a simple flaw? That's what they want you to believe. Hard-coded passwords are NOT a flaw, they are an intention back door for... company engineers... company spies... the government... Just sayin'!

Thanks, I read that after I took a few seconds to bypass the paywall. I guess the NYT is a source, but unfortunately the story is very devoid of facts... only that one line on the theft (and an interview with a scrap metal guy and a politician unrelated to the incident)? Not one snippet anywhere else on any of the major news sites? Either I'm not looking hard enough (probably) or the theft was conjured up to add some drama to the story... anyone to disprove that silly theory?

Is there any source on the Pitcher utility line theft story? I can't find anything. I doubt the "blackout" was a very big deal considering that the town is a ghost town with only six residences remaining. The town has been basically dead since it was declared a superfund site, and then a tornado hit a few years ago and wiped away the rest. Kind of puts that part of the story in perspective...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picher,_Oklahoma