I want to talk for a moment about tolerance

This post is in response to this Twitter thread. I was going to do a series of tweets in response, but as the number grew, I thought it'd better be done in a blog.


She thinks we are fighting for the rights of Nazis. We aren't -- indeed, the fact that she thinks we are is exactly the problem. They aren't Nazis.

The issue is not about a slippery slope that first Nazi's lose free speech, then other groups start losing their speech as well. The issue is that it's a slippery slope that more and more people get labeled a Nazi. And we are already far down that slope.

The "alt-right" is a diverse group. Like any group. Vilifying the entire alt-right by calling them Nazi's is like lumping all Muslims in with ISIS or Al Qaeda. We really don't have Nazi's in America. Even White Nationalists don't fit the bill. Nazism was about totalitarianism, real desire to exterminate Jews, lebensraum, and Aryan superiority. Sure, some of these people exist, but they are a fringe, even among Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: What secrets does the recent HP Officejet 8715 firmware update hold?

Jumping in the wayback machine and going back to 2015, we all can remember that HP issued a printer firmware update that locked printers into only using HP ink cartridges. This meant that printers would sense the use of recycled cartridges or third party cartridges and would present an error and stop working.When asked, HP offered this comment: HP is constantly improving security for its products and customers. Beginning in late 2015, HP implemented updates to the firmware related to the security chip in HP OfficeJet, OfficeJet Pro and OfficeJet Pro X printers that maintains secure communications between the cartridge and the printer. The purpose of this update is to protect HP’s innovations and intellectual property. These printers will continue to work with refilled or remanufactured cartridges with an Original HP security chip. Other cartridges may not function. In many cases this functionality was installed in the HP printer and in some cases it has been implemented as part of an update to the printer’s firmware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft discusses progress in GitHub migration

Just last month, Microsoft announced it planned to close its CodePlex code hosting service in favor of GitHub, which it had been using more and more frequently anyway. This week, the company announced the progress it has made in making the move and issues that cropped up along the way. Microsoft staffer Brian Harry said in a blog posting that the Windows repository is the largest Git repository in the world. Weighing in at 300GB and 3.5 million files, the Git repository catches 8,421 pull requests and 1,760 official builds a day. Overall, Microsoft has nearly 4,000 engineers working on Windows. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A Skunk Works with tractors: Inside John Deere’s IoT-innovation unit

John Deere’s Intelligent Solutions Group is at the forefront of an IoT-based revolution in agriculture and the cutting edge of the firm’s aggressive development of technology to turn farming from an art into a science – a remarkable transformation for a company founded 180 years ago selling a self-scouring plow.The ISG, as Deere employees generally refer to it, has been around for about 15 years, and one of its first projects was to wire the company’s machines with cellular modems. According to John Deere director of technology John Teeple, the idea was what he called an “interior-focused value proposition” – the plan would have been to collect metrics from those modems in-house to study usage patterns.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft’s DNA storage tech may fit in an enterprise

Microsoft has apparently firmed up its plans for a DNA-based storage device that it expects to be commercially available within about three years.The software giant originally unveiled its research into DNA as an archival storage medium last year; it described the technology being able to store the amount of data in "a big data center compressed into a few sugar cubes. Or all the publicly accessible data on the Internet slipped into a shoebox."That is the promise of DNA storage -- once scientists are able to scale the technology and overcome a series of technical hurdles," the company said in a 2016 blog post.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft’s DNA storage tech may fit in an enterprise

Microsoft has apparently firmed up its plans for a DNA-based storage device that it expects to be commercially available within about three years.The software giant originally unveiled its research into DNA as an archival storage medium last year; it described the technology being able to store the amount of data in "a big data center compressed into a few sugar cubes. Or all the publicly accessible data on the Internet slipped into a shoebox."That is the promise of DNA storage -- once scientists are able to scale the technology and overcome a series of technical hurdles," the company said in a 2016 blog post.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A Skunk Works – with tractors – inside John Deere’s IoT-innovation unit

John Deere’s Intelligent Solutions Group is at the forefront of an IoT-based revolution in agriculture and the cutting edge of the firm’s aggressive development of technology to turn farming from an art into a science – a remarkable transformation for a company founded 180 years ago selling a self-scouring plow.The ISG, as Deere employees generally refer to it, has been around for about 15 years, and one of its first projects was to wire the company’s machines with cellular modems. According to John Deere director of technology John Teeple, the idea was what he called an “interior-focused value proposition” – the plan would have been to collect metrics from those modems in-house to study usage patterns.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: ISO 27018 for the cloud

Cloud computing technologies have revolutionized the way organizations manage and store their information. Where companies used to house and maintain their own data, a host of organizations have now made the switch to a cloud-based model due to the ease of use and cost-saving benefits promised by the cloud. But what is a cloud without a little rain? The benefits of cloud technologies have not come without their costs. —Cloud Security Alliance

The post Worth Reading: ISO 27018 for the cloud appeared first on rule 11 reader.

Power surge at British Airways data center causes flight chaos

A major British Airways crash has highlighted the importance for businesses of testing backup systems and disaster recovery procedures to ensure that they work as planned.The airline experienced what CEO Alex Cruz described as "a major IT systems failure" that, he said, affected all check-in and operational systems.The failure on Saturday, May 27, resulted in the delay or cancellation of hundreds of flights, leaving thousands of passengers stranded at London's Heathrow Airport on a holiday weekend. Things were still not back to normal two days later.Cruz described the cause of the failure as "a power supply issue," without going into detail.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Power surge at British Airways data center causes flight chaos

A major British Airways crash has highlighted the importance for businesses of testing backup systems and disaster recovery procedures to ensure that they work as planned.The airline experienced what CEO Alex Cruz described as "a major IT systems failure" that, he said, affected all check-in and operational systems.The failure on Saturday, May 27, resulted in the delay or cancellation of hundreds of flights, leaving thousands of passengers stranded at London's Heathrow Airport on a holiday weekend. Things were still not back to normal two days later.Cruz described the cause of the failure as "a power supply issue," without going into detail.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Is Anyone Using Open Daylight?

A while ago I sent out an email to my SDN and network automation mailing list (join here) asking whether anyone uses Open Daylight in anything close to a production environment (because I haven’t ever seen one).

Among many responses saying “not here” I got a polite email from VP of Marketing working for a company that sells OpenDaylight-related services listing tons of customer deployments (no surprise there).

Read more ...

DNS OARC 26

OARC 26 was held in May in Madrid. Here are my impressions of the meeting, drawn from some presentations that I found to be of personal interest.

SREcon, DevOpsDays and Seattle vs Sillicon Valley

I am the Product Manager for StackStorm. This gives me the opportunity to attend several industry events. This year I attended SREcon in San Francisco, and devopsdays Seattle. I found both events interesting, but also found them more different than I expected.

SREcon Americas

This year SREcon Americas was held in San Francisco, a nice walk along the Embarcadero from where I live. This is bliss compared to my regular daily tour of the Californian outdoor antique railway museum, aka Caltrain.

According to the organizers, SREcon is:

…a gathering of engineers who care deeply about site reliability, systems engineering, and working with complex distributed systems at scale

That was pretty much true to form. Two things stood out to me:

  • The number of smart people, working on interesting problems
  • The number of companies aggressively hiring in this space.

I had many interesting conversations at SREcon. We had a booth, so would briefly start describing what StackStorm is, but would very quickly move past that. Conversations often went “Oh yeah, we’ve built something along those lines in-house, because there was nothing on the market back when we needed it. But I wouldn’t do it again. How did you solve <insert knotty Continue reading

SREcon, DevOpsDays and Seattle vs Sillicon Valley

I am the Product Manager for StackStorm. This gives me the opportunity to attend several industry events. This year I attended SREcon in San Francisco, and devopsdays Seattle. I found both events interesting, but also found them more different than I expected.

SREcon Americas

This year SREcon Americas was held in San Francisco, a nice walk along the Embarcadero from where I live. This is bliss compared to my regular daily tour of the Californian outdoor antique railway museum, aka Caltrain.

According to the organizers, SREcon is:

…a gathering of engineers who care deeply about site reliability, systems engineering, and working with complex distributed systems at scale

That was pretty much true to form. Two things stood out to me:

  • The number of smart people, working on interesting problems
  • The number of companies aggressively hiring in this space.

I had many interesting conversations at SREcon. We had a booth, so would briefly start describing what StackStorm is, but would very quickly move past that. Conversations often went “Oh yeah, we’ve built something along those lines in-house, because there was nothing on the market back when we needed it. But I wouldn’t do it again. How did you solve <insert knotty Continue reading

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