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 2007-12-25

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Judge: Man can’t be forced to divulge encryption passphrase | The Iconoclast – politics, law, and technology – CNET News.com Ah, the 5th Amendment, where you don’t have to provide evidence to incriminate yourself. This is potentially a landmark case if it withstands appeal. Joel Spolsky’s Travel Survival Guide – Business Travel – Software Demo’ing “Oh, and we refused to fly Northwest Airlines (NYSE:NWA), which routinely schedules more flights than they have the ability to operate.” I won’t fly NWA unless I absolutely have to.

links for 2007-12-23

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New Year, New You: How to Travel the World with (or without) Kids in 2008 | The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss “Safe is a term that really means, ‘a level of risk that Iā€™m comfortable with.’” Amen. Bill Clinton: iPhone User – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) “why didn’t he snag his old buddy an iPhone himself? Or, as Ioffe writes, at least a prerelease 3G version.” Probably because Mr. Clinton wanted a WORKING PHONE, not some dev model. Not everybody is as interested in tech oneupsmanship as techies are. Startup Math: 1 + 1 = 1/2 Ā« FoundRead I’ve often commented that having a new person on staff is like having a -1 additional people on board, at …

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Holidays, w00t

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Hey all, First of all I have to say thanks for another great year. I really enjoy writing here, and you folks have been great to me, encouraging me, and generally making me believe that I’m not just writing for myself. Not that I’d stop, of course, but it’s nice when someone is listening. šŸ™‚ So thank you! I’m off for the holidays. As with most vacations for me the lead-up to them is terrible, with the nailing down of loose ends being the key time sink. I’ve also had a couple of big presentations & proposals to make, so I haven’t been as attentive as I should be to my email. I know a few of you have emailed …

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links for 2007-12-19

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Delivery By EULA – The Daily WTF The Quiznos search is the funniest. Lights Off for the Apple iPhone I cannot wait for February, so that I can get some games on my iPhone. I want to play this, but I’m not going to hack my phone just for it…

Use a Laptop For Single Machine KVM?

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Okay, here’s a silly question: I want to use my laptop as the monitor and keyboard for a server. Kinda like KVM over IP, but I only need to attach to a single server. You might ask, “Bob, what sort of ridiculous thing are you trying to do?” I’m glad you asked! Basically I have a bunch of machines deployed all over the place where there aren’t monitors. I hate dragging a monitor with me when I go to visit them. Sometimes there are even KVM-over-IP switches, but no monitor, and getting a network connection to use the KVM-over-IP is a bunch of hassle. Sometimes the machines can do serial console redirection, but not universally and that doesn’t seem to …

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links for 2007-12-18

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QuickBooks users be cautious of recent update – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) Wow, the QuickBooks update deletes everything off your desktop? Bad news. Coudal Partners – Booking Bands People are mashing up book names and band names. Also makes me want to put chalkboards in bathrooms everywhere. Actor Tries to Trademark ‘N’ Word Since I was born I’ve been told, by people of all races and colors, that this word is derogatory and evil. Not to mention us white guys can’t use it. As such I’m glad it isn’t being allowed by the Patent & Trademark Office. Top 10 Tips for New Bloggers From Original Blogger Jorn Barger “If you spend a little time searching before you post, you …

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Predictions For 2008

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What is it with people predicting things for next year? Am I the only one without a crystal ball? I was thinking that if I have to read another predictive blog post I’m going to hurt myself. But then, right as I was picking up the meat tenderizer for a whack on the skull, I thought, “hey, why don’t I post my own predictions for 2008?” 1. Virtualization will continue to exist. All throughout 2008 people will continue to virtualize things, doing it at least slightly faster than they did in 2007. 2. Hardware will get faster and have new features that do new things. Bus, CPU, and network speeds will get faster. Hardware vendors will release new models which …

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links for 2007-12-16

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The Old New Thing : The compatibility constraints of your side effects: Beeping “Why does the Welcome screen beep if you hit the space bar after the computer has finished starting up?” A bug, as it turns out, which ended up being a feature.

links for 2007-12-15

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Windows Tip: Put Windows Media Player in Party Mode Party mode, where it locks itself so people can’t alter the playlist. You know why WinAMP and iTunes don’t have this? BECAUSE YOU CAN LOCK THE CONSOLE OF THE PC. OPENhulu – Hulu Embeds for EVERYONE Heh, that didn’t take long. Because I couldn’t say it on the phone | dooce Ā® Heather Armstrong writing about what she went through when she stopped taking her medications. It takes a lot of guts and experience to write stuff like this. It takes more to tell someone, which is what she was writing about in the first place.

Why You Shouldn't Touch Bulbs

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One of my hobbies is theatrical lighting design. Sometimes I find myself training new helpers in the mysterious arts of the theater. One of those arts is replacing lamps in lighting fixtures (“lighting instruments” in theater parlance). Rule #1 of replacing a lamp: don’t touch the bulb. Why? Because the gunk from your skin causes a hotspot which melts the glass. That’s a thumb-sized hole in the bulb: This is my new example of why these aren’t arbitrary rules. šŸ™‚

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