ers81239 - Slashdot User

Comment Code that got the SME's fired. (Score 1) 280

by ers81239 on Tuesday November 22, 2016 @05:09PM (#53341797) Attached to: Slashdot Asks: Are You Ashamed of Your Code?

I was ashamed of my naivety when I worked on an freelancer-scheduling app for event planning.

I was embedded with this team of about 15 people whose job it was to fill slots for servers, greeters, busboys, drivers, etc for a large event planning business. I sat with these people for 2 months, learning how they did their job and writing some software to help automate it.

When I got done they fired all but 2 of the people because they weren't needed. I really didn't see that coming and felt terrible, especially since they had really helped me succeed at my job.

Submission + - An Anonymous, Verifiable E-Voting Tech (ted.com) 1

Submitted by Kilrah_il on Wednesday November 03, 2010 @04:42AM

Kilrah_il writes: After the recent news items about the obstacles facing E-voting systems, many of us feel it is not yet time for this technology. A recent TED talk by David Bismark unveiled a proposal for a new E-voting technology that is both anonymous and verifiable. I am not a cryptography expert, but it does seem interesting and possibly doable.

Comment Hardware As A Service (HAAS) (Score 1) 606

by ers81239 on Monday October 18, 2010 @12:03PM (#33934056) Attached to: Generic PCs For Corporate Use?

DoD Acquisitions has a focus on 'performance oriented' contracting. They suggest you buy things the way you buy managed servers at a server farm like rackspace.com. So, you could try to let a contract for the use of 1000PCs for 2 years and specify downtime, replacement, and repair measures. Offer the contractor rewards for exceeding the minimum requirements and penalties for not.

I think the idea applies pretty well here. I wonder how it would work. I'd call it HAAS - Hardware as a Service.

Submission + - Keeping up with security requirements in Linux.

Submitted by ers81239 on Wednesday July 22, 2009 @03:09PM

ers81239 writes: I've recently become a Linux administrator within the Department of Defense. I am surprised to find out that the DoD actually publishes extensive guidance on minimum software versions. I guess that isn't so surprising, but the version numbers are. Kernel 2.6.30, ntp 4.2.4p7-RC2, openssl 9.8k and the openssh to match, etc. The surprising part is that these are very fresh versions which are not included in many distributions. We use SUSE Enterprise quite a bit, but even openSUSE factory (their word for unstable) doesn't have these packages. Tarballing on this many systems is nightmare and even then some things just don't seem to work. I don't have time to track down every possible lib/etc/opt/local/share path that different packages try to use by default. I think that this really highlights the tradeoffs of stability and security.

I have called Novell to ask about it. When vulnerabilities are found in software, they backport the patches into whatever version of the software they are currently supporting. The problem here is that doesn't give me a guarantee that the backport fixes the problem for which this upgrade is required (My requirements say to install version x or higher). There is also the question of how quickly they are providing the backports.

I'm hoping that there are 100's of DoD Linux administrators reading this who can bombard me with solutions. How do you balance security with stability?

Comment Re:Yes! (Score 2, Interesting) 345

by ers81239 on Saturday June 13, 2009 @07:22PM (#28323243) Attached to: Are Code Reviews Worth It?

I just want to highlight your second point. I believe that THE most important thing gained from code reviews is the spreading knowledge and gaining understanding. New development is always great, but most programming is maintaining/fixing/improving existing projects. A code review is a great way to really learn about code readability. You actually get to see other people read your code and you get to read other people's code. All of this code is fresh in someone's mind so it can be explained, and how to make it more readable can be discussed. I learned a ton about writing maintainable code at my first job where we did regular code reviews.

On the more technical side, often once the code is discussed much simpler ways to solve the problem is discovered. It isn't about the individual bug fixes/improvements that can come from a code review. Its really a way to improve your programmers.

Comment mIRC (Score 1) 360

by ers81239 on Tuesday April 07, 2009 @09:16AM (#27487999) Attached to: Internal Instant Messaging Client / Server Combo?

I have seen mIRC used in situations even more secure than the one you describe.

Comment Of course. (Score 0, Offtopic) 396

by ers81239 on Monday March 23, 2009 @09:40AM (#27297255) Attached to: Researchers Demo BIOS Attack That Survives Disk Wipes

Last I checked, the BIOS lives in a chip, not the HDD. Thus the magic diskless booting. How is this news?

Feed What Would Jesus Wiki? (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @07:12AM

Conservapedia is the web's go-to reference for conservative Christians, but for everyone else it's one of the biggest laughs on the net. By Michael Calore.

Submission + - New technique for recycling PCBs

Submitted by

MattSparkes

on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @07:04AM

MattSparkes writes: "PCBs from discarded computers, cellphones and other devices could be recycled less harmfully using a technique developed by researchers in China. Unlike current methods, it can be used to reclaim metals such as copper without releasing toxic fumes into the air. Only a small numbers of PCBs are currently recycled."

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