<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
+ <item>
+ <title>12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
+looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
+all over the place. I am also a member (and currently leader) of
+<a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
+make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>. NUUG
+is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
+software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
+is a US based member organisation with similar targets. And thanks to
+these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
+<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
+mail several times a year. The magazine is great, and I read most of
+it every time.</p>
+
+<p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
+article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
+Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
+"<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
+Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
+<a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
+from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
+processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
+last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
+etc etc. The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
+what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
+me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
+
+<p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
+standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
+it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
+assumtions on scope and user impact. Here is the two example from the
+article: First the unplanned outage:
+
+<blockquote><pre>
+Subject: Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
+Severity: Critical (Unplanned)
+Start: Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
+End: Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
+Duration: 40 minutes
+Scope: Exchange 2003
+Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
+ a cluster failover.
+
+User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
+ access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
+Technician: [xxx]
+</pre></blockquote>
+
+Next the planned outage:
+
+<blockquote><pre>
+Subject: H Building Switch Upgrades
+Severity: Major (Planned)
+Start: Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
+End: Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
+Duration: 10 hours
+Scope: H2 Transport
+Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
+ stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
+ 4510s.
+User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
+ this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
+ connectivity.
+Technician: [xxx]
+</pre></blockquote>
+
+<p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
+been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
+into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
+dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
+people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
+format listed above). There are also other issues with the format
+that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
+
+<p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
+good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
+university too. We do register
+<a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
+changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
+list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
+report to the same location for unplanned outages. Perhaps something
+for other sites to consider too?</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 22 Oct 2012 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
+<a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
+Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
+and refuse to tell the customer why</a>. If a real book store did
+this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
+and theft. The story has spread around the net today. A bit more
+background information is available in Norwegian from
+<a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
+It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
+this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
+introduced many years back. And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
+willing to
+<a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
+break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
+bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
+customers who had bought it. From the official comments, it even
+sounded like
+<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
+would never do that again</a>. And here we are, three years
+later.</p>
+
+<p>And thought this action is
+<a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
+Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
+as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
+Norwegian laws. It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
+of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
+rights.</p>
+
+<p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
+unacceptable terms. For example
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
+books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
+books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
+Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
+can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
+
+<p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
+the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
+restored the account of the user, as reported by
+<a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
+and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
+Apparently public pressure work. The story from Martin have seen
+several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
+a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention. But even when the
+account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist. I recommend
+reading two opinions from
+<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
+Phipps</a> and
+<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
+Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
+details about the original story.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>The fight for freedom and privacy</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 18 Oct 2012 10:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
+drain, and it is hard to fight against it. I try to do my best, but
+time is limited. I hope you do your best too. A few years ago I came
+across a marvellous drawing by
+<a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
+visualising some of what is going on.
+
+<p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
+<img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+«They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
+safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Do you feel safe at the airport? I do not. Do you feel safe when
+you see a surveillance camera? I do not. Do you feel safe when you
+leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions? I do not. I
+just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
+Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
+transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
<item>
<title>57 kommuner omfavner nå FiksGataMi</title>
<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/57_kommuner_omfavner_n__FiksGataMi.html</link>
Nei takk. Med slike bruksvilkår takker jeg høflig nei til tilbudet,
og de får ikke meg som kunde før de har en helt annen tilnærming mot
sine kunder.</p>
+
+<p>Oppdatering 2012-10-18: Både
+<a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/digital/Netflix-krever-at-du-sier-fra-deg-norske-forbrukerrettigheter-7021182.html">Aftenposten</a>,
+<a href="http://nrk.no/helse-forbruk-og-livsstil/1.8362951">NRK</a> og
+<a href="http://www.teknofil.no/artikler/forbrukerradet-slakter-netflix/113679">Teknofil</a>
+har snappet opp saken (dog nevner ikke NRK kilde, så de kan jo ha
+oppdaget det selv). Veldig bra at flere blir oppmerksom på slike
+ting. «- Helt hinsides, mener Forbrukerrådet om Netflix'
+brukervilkår», siterer Aftenposten. Og
+<a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/Forbrukerombudet-vil-granske-TV-markedet-7021465.html">Aftenposten</a>
+melder videre at Forbrukerrådet vil granske TV-bransjen med bakgrunn i
+dette.</p>
</description>
</item>
<ul>
+<li>
+2012-10-25
+<a href="http://morgenbladet.no/debatt/2012/hvem_bor_i_tomannsboliger">Hvem bor i tomannsboliger?</a> - morgenbladet.no
+
+<li>2012-10-18
+<a href="http://morgenbladet.no/debatt/2012/postmodernisme">Postmodernisme?</a> - morgenbladet.no</li>
+
<li>2012-10-16
<a href="http://fritanke.no/index.php?page=vis_nyhet&NyhetID=8936">Sukkerpiller
-og silkehansker</a> - fritanke.no.</li>
+og silkehansker</a> - fritanke.no</li>
<li>2012-10-15
<a href="http://www.aftenbladet.no/meninger/Vitenskapelig-mobbing-3049983.html">«Vitenskapelig»
<p>Bonuslenke til deg som lurer på om det er så farlig med alternativ
behandling. Sjekk «<a href="http://whatstheharm.net/">What's the
harm</a>» for informasjon om hva som kan gå galt.</a>
+
+<p>Oppdatering 2012-10-30: Lagt inn to nye debattinnlegg publisert
+etter 2012-10-16.</p>
</description>
</item>
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff