Labels Should Not Be Affixed To Removable Parts

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Once upon a time, in a data center not far away, a lone system administrator took the front bezels off several identical machines. Upon completing the work, this individual discovered that the labels for those machines were on the bezels themselves, making it difficult to tell which machines the bezels belonged to. Shortly thereafter, this lone system administrator configured the front display of those particular Dell servers to display the machine name, thereby solving this problem for himself and retaining the use of the bezels, because they’re pretty. Once upon a longer time ago, in a data center slightly farther away, a lone system administrator added a network interface card to one of his hosts. In doing this he removed …

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Links for March 30th, 2011

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No Privacy on Amazon’s Cloud Drive | ZDNet “Wow. Amazon can do pretty much anything they want with your files Like say let the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) inspect your music files for any signs that you haven’t pay full price for them. You remember the RIAA; they’re the ones who want $75-trillion from LimeWire for allowing 11,000 songs to be illegally shared.” Senators to Apple: Pull iPhone DUI checkpoint alert apps – Computerworld I’m going to ask Apple to pull all the applications I don’t like, too. Easily Enable SNMP – Download Our FREE SNMP Enabler for Windows | SolarWinds “This cool tool gives you the ability to power up SNMP on multiple Windows servers and workstations—all …

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8 Hints For Using DNS More Effectively

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“We can solve any problem by introducing an extra level of indirection.” – Butler Lampson 1. DNS is a hierarchy. Use it to show logical groupings. Fully-qualified domain names (FQDNs) like pussinbootsthemovie.com are great examples of what happens when you don’t take advantage of the hierarchy in DNS. Wouldn’t pussinboots.dreamworks.com be just as easy? Or, frankly, just avoid the issue and do what Disney does: http://disney.com/cars/. What if all your company’s desktops were in .desktop.company.com? Would that help assign permissions to them? Or your engineering group had all their stuff in .eng.company.com? Test hosts in .test.company.com? Would having all your services at your DR site in .dr.company.com help to manage, monitor, and use them? I’m not saying that any of …

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2060 Days

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After five years of the same old look around here I decided it was time to refresh things a little bit with a new theme, splurging for the Thesis Theme for WordPress. I’ve adjusted some of the sizing based on what Google Analytics has collected for data, namely that my average visitor has a screen resolution that’s 1280 pixels wide or more. Having to keep graphics to 400 pixels was wearing on me. 42% of my visitors use Firefox, 27% Internet Explorer, 20% Chrome, and 7% Safari. 71% are Windows users, 13% Linux, and 11% Macintosh, which excites me a little bit, but seeing that only 0.45% of my raw hits are via IPv6 depresses me again. Anyhow, thanks for …

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Links for March 23rd, 2011

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www.usenix.org/event/hotpar10/final_posters/Pereira.pdf “Virtues and Obstacles of Hardware-assisted Multi-processor Execution Replay” — if you want to know why VMware Fault Tolerance doesn’t support vSMP, this fairly complex paper tells you: there’s no good way to do record & replay on multi-threaded software just due to the complexity and non-deterministic nature of how CPUs execute code. jps.anl.gov/Volume4_iss2/Paper3-RGJohnston.pdf “Being Vulnerable to the Threat of Confusing Threats with Vulnerabilities” — good short paper encouraging people to know the difference between a threat and a vulnerability. For instance, one example he gives is that not having antivirus protection on a desktop is a vulnerability, while adversaries wanting to install malware on those desktops is a threat. Smithsonian on the Behance Network These “Historically Hardcore” posters are …

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Links for March 19th, 2011

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Securosis Blog | Friday Summary: March 18, 2011—Preparing for the Worst I don’t think enough people are prepared for a disaster. Being able to exist using cached supplies (including water) for 7-10 days is a good idea, whether you’ve evacuated or are entrenched at home. I used to have 3-5 days of freeze-dried food around because of hiking, but now with others to think about that makes it 1-3 days. Easier than Ever: Emulex OneCommand Manager for VMware vCenter | Emulex Labs This is the sort of thing I like to see. While I don’t like how agent- & appliance-heavy things are getting it is cool that management software is getting more useful in the face of ESXi’s limited console …

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Links for March 14th, 2011

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Comic Sans. Just Say No. – The Posterior of Randal Schwartz “Please don’t use Comic Sans — we are a Fortune 500 company, not a lemonade stand.” Self-Preservation : Glenn Brunette’s Security Weblog I’m sorry to single someone out, but blogs, like theater, shouldn’t break “the fourth wall.” If, as a technology company, you can’t keep the details of a blog migration away from the readers how can I expect you to enable me to do so with services built on your products? AT&T will cap DSL and U-Verse internet, impose overage fees (update) — Engadget “AT&T says it will implement a 150GB monthly cap on landline DSL customers and a 250GB cap on subscribers to U-Verse high speed internet …

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Links for March 11th, 2011

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Recent Scenes from Antarctica – Alan Taylor – In Focus – The Atlantic More UW-Madison in the news — the IceCube project is pretty cool. The Wisdom of Ackoff « Cuddletech “You never learn by doing something right, because you’re already doing it right. You only learn by mistakes.” Been saying that for years — nobody learns anything when it’s all working correctly. Ben Rockwood has distilled some good quotes from Dr. Russell Ackoff. Color-Coded Plastic Ties Tell You Day Your Bread Was Baked – The Consumerist Heh, cool. Via @geardiary & @johnobeto TCP Flags: PSH and URG – Packet Life I guess I never realized it’s PSH that tells TCP that an app is done sending data, and not …

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How to Set or Change a Dell PowerEdge Service Tag

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Got a Dell PowerEdge that you replaced the motherboard on, and now it doesn’t have a service tag? Reset it with the asset.com tool, which I’ve conveniently packaged as both a floppy disk image and an ISO for those of us in need. They both use the Windows 7 boot disk DOS and asset_A209.com from ftp.dell.com (renamed to asset.com). Dell Asset and Service Tag.IMA Dell Asset and Service Tag.ISO Once you boot from these you can set the service tag with: asset /s <service tag> You can also set the asset tag with: asset <asset tag> Or clear the asset tag with: asset /d Have fun! Standard disclaimer: your mileage may vary, and while I’m not actively trying to be …

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vSoup 5, with Cheeseheads and Badgers

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“vSoup 5 – the USB Deviation” is up now, starring Chris, Christian, and Ed, with Gabrie van Zanten as the guest. I had a lot of fun at VMworld Europe 2010 with all four of these guys, and I’m looking forward to listening to the episode. As a thank you to the guys for having me on vSoup #4 I’m sponsoring the prize this week: a Wisconsin camouflage prize package, complete with an official NFL cheesehead, to celebrate the Green Bay Packers winning the Super Bowl, and a University of Wisconsin – Madison t-shirt in your choice of size and color: red, white, or gray. Both are perfect for parties, especially if you aren’t a sports fan, as nobody will …

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