Sysadmins with CS degrees came up in conversation today, so I want to state my rule of thumb. Assuming that a CS degree makes someone a good potential sysadmin is like assuming that all Bio majors are good in bed.
October 12, 2007
August 26, 2007
Oh no, someone read a world readable file in UNIX
Chris Josephes makes a great point in this post. Anything can read /etc/passwd, even for a better reason than, “OMG HAX.” If you’re going to worry about it, you should wonder why it might be world readable. And in UNIX, if you really have to worry about it, it should not be.
I guess this is isn’t always the default reaction you would have when you come from an OS that forces you to give over admin-level access to install software.
One aside to all this is that the Mac isn’t safe because of social engineering. If you have a Mac, do you really wonder why it’s asking for the admin password to install softare? There’s almost nothing that should ever need it. But most of us will shrug and type it anyway.
August 23, 2007
Let me add my voice to the outrage
Yes, Sun Microsystems changing their stock ticket from SUNW to JAVA because Java is more recognized by consumers is dumb. It’s not BoxHill to DotHill dumb, but it’s certainly dumb. People know Sun. People buy Sun stock because of the numbers. The numbers depend on people giving Sun money because they make better products. Nobody cares that teenagers might know that the Java logo on a cellphone is Sun. Make better products. Sun does poorly when they make decisions that result in poorer products. OPOF in two years. I call it.
June 28, 2007
Seventeen Days of Freedom, Day Thirteen
I had lunch with Anike at Boqueria. Anike was the fearless leader of my college’s student government, had gone on to a career in TV and then gave it all up to be a chef. I think that 66% of my friends from college went that route.
The lunch was cut a little short by a call from daycare that power was out in the neighborhood and that I needed to come up. I grabbed one of the overflowing busses, but things were ok before I got up there. This is one area where I’m really unhappy with Bloomberg. OK, the August 2003 blackout had nothing to do with him, although it certainly is resonant of New York’s problems: an aging infrastructure where public oversight is surrendered in the face of business interests or just an inability of government to tackle areas where serious public problems might demand careful regulation. Last year’s eight day blackout in Queens, during which Con Edision totally dropped the ball resulted in Bloomberg offering the city’s thanks to Con Edison’s CEO and a compliment on the job Con Edision did. By any account except Bloomberg and Con Edison’s, their response had been rediculous. It’s easy to be Mayor when things are going well. But it’s not acceptable to be out of touch when a company with a serious public mission fails the city and leaves the city at risk. The city certainly remains at risk.
I also attended the innagural meeting of the NYC Open Solaris User Group with Chad. It looks potentially interesting, specifically for people interesting in running the bleeding edge of Solaris. The inital presentation was on Crossbow, Solaris’ network virtualization project. The efforts are really great news for Solaris admins who want to do careful network resource control, accounting, monitoring or have more control over how the network is handled in zones. If you’re having any problem with simply sending all network resources on a box through one network and the global zone, it’s the project to keep an eye on.