Bob Plankers

Bob Plankers is a man who wears many hats. In his professional career he has spent three decades leading teams that design, build, operate, and talk about reliable, secure, and compliant IT infrastructures, both in the public sector and in the high tech industry. He currently focuses on applied security, compliance, and operational resilience for virtualization and cloud platforms.

links for 2008-12-08

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valhenson: A band-aid solution "I am creeped out by having a built-in video camera on my laptop. I never use it, so the only thing it's good for is being taken over by malicious spyware in order to stream video of me… So the only reliable solution is to disable it via hardware." Excellent solution. I also dislike video cameras. McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Atlas Shrugged Updated for the Current Financial Crisis. LOL. Madison Snaps — December 2, 2008 – Isthmus | The Daily Page Cool photo from north of Madison, WI.

links for 2008-12-07

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Privacy Compliance 101: Why Massachusetts Data Security Standards DO Affect You Great, one more thing to worry about (though organizations should be doing these sorts of things anyhow). rc3.org — The lesson I taught today "When you’re programming, the relentless pursuit of simplicity nearly always serves you well." Good advice for anybody in technology. Real Advice Hurts | 43 Folders "…the advice that’s easy to take is so rarely the advice that could really make a difference." Amen. This is why I usually ask people what they're trying to do when they ask me a question about something. Let's talk about Python 3.0 A friend of mine had expressed his discontent with Python 3.0 to me on Friday. I see …

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Join This Guy

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Would you join this guy in a marketing company? Sure, English is probably his second language, but still.

Problems

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I was called last night by my NOC staff to resolve a problem. I don’t remember what time it was, just that my phone rang and I answered it. It was like a dream, with VPNs and shell prompts. On my way back to sleep I was thinking about problem resolution, and that there really are two phases to it. First, you get the immediate problem fixed. Then you make sure it won’t happen again. The trouble with this is that very few organizations get around to the “making sure it won’t happen again” part. It’s hard and time-consuming to track down the root cause of a problem. It’s hard to make changes to help prevent it. Heck, maybe you …

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Inaccuracy

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“A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.” – Saki (hat tip to QOTD as usual, best quote feed ever)

License Changes

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I didn’t want to do this, but like many other bloggers I’ve been finding my content appearing in other places. Some places do a nice job of quoting it and linking back, but a couple sites have blatantly hijacked my content for use on their own blog. That annoys me a lot, especially when they’re making money from my content, or competing with me with my own content. Like WTF. This makes me grumpy. As a result I’ve changed my license to the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 license. I’ve given this some thought, and I hope it doesn’t get in anybody’s way. I am a huge fan of fair use, and the Creative Commons license says that this license should …

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links for 2008-12-01

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SmugBlog: Don MacAskill » Blog Archive » First 1080p video from Canon’s new 5D MkII – Amazing! I just want the 200mm f/2.0 lens he's got. Again, holy crap. Nikon unveils 24.5MP D3x digital SLR: Digital Photography Review 50 MB 14-bit RAW files… holy crap. Bentley Continental news – Continental drift – 2008 – BBC Top Gear Everybody should learn how to drive on ice, so you know how your car handles in those situations. The Old New Thing : Not my finest hour: Getting instructions on doing something I've already done I've done this before — looked for the solution to a problem I was having just to find out that I had a blog post with the answer. …

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…and it begins.

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I hope everybody has had a good Thanksgiving, if you’re in the U.S.A., or at least just a good weekend all around. Where I live Mother Nature didn’t waste much time getting winter under way, as captured while I was messing with my new lens. I should go find my shovel before the other 5.75″ of snow falls.

links for 2008-11-20

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Microsoft: We Promise Not To Kill McAfee, Symantec (MSFT) You know what? Just let McAfee & Symantec figure it out. You have a gaping hole in your products, MS, and you need to fix it. Everybody has known that someday you were going integrate antivirus software. Today is that day. DO IT.

Symantec Does The Right Thing

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Mr. Epping over at Yellow Bricks (which looks nice, BTW) has broken the news this morning that Symantec has clarified their stance on VMotion, and it’s not explicitly unsupported now. This is good. I suspect that folks at VMware had some role in Symantec’s change of course, partner relationships, etc. Whoever was part of this, thank you. And thank you Symantec for not being a typical corporation and staying the course because you don’t want to look foolish. Personally, I always say that I reserve the right to change my mind when I get new information. I’m glad to see others doing the same.

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