Can we please stop paying the Microsoft and NSA taxes and start buying datacenter equipment which costs a lot less? Cubieboard/Cubietrucks for instance?
Ref.: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors...
Best regards, James
On 29 December 2013 12:55, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Can we please stop paying the Microsoft and NSA taxes
The WMF doesn't.
and start buying datacenter equipment which costs a lot less? Cubieboard/Cubietrucks for instance?
Ref.:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors...
Best regards, James
Using non standard data center equipment is a great way to add costs.
As for security given the limited resources the WMF has whenever GCHQ, FSB and MSS have wanted to get in they have and there is nothing we can do about this.
On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 5:17 AM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 29 December 2013 12:55, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Can we please stop paying the Microsoft and NSA taxes
The WMF doesn't.
and start buying datacenter equipment which costs a lot less? Cubieboard/Cubietrucks for instance?
Ref.:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors...
Best regards, James
Using non standard data center equipment is a great way to add costs.
Naw, it's a great idea. Let's switch to building our own ARM-based servers (by the way, which have already been a flop commercially), using only unproven, low-volume available motherboards and having to buy and assemble all of the rest of the components. And then of course, we need to design our own cases... and since these have such a low performance, we'll need to have a lot more rack and datacenter space, of course which comes with a cost... and we'll have to figure out how to run our caching layers which require large amounts of memory... and our storage layers which require large amounts of disk space..... At that point we'll probably need to redesign those boards which are incapable of doing these things, so we'll need a team of hardware engineers, plus a deal with a manufacturing plant.
So... I think with about a 100 million dollar per year research budget we can do this. Who's ponying up? ;)
As for security given the limited resources the WMF has whenever GCHQ, FSB and MSS have wanted to get in they have and there is nothing we can do about this. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
2013/12/29 Leslie Carr lcarr@wikimedia.org
On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 5:17 AM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 29 December 2013 12:55, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Can we please stop paying the Microsoft and NSA taxes
The WMF doesn't.
and start buying datacenter equipment which costs a lot less? Cubieboard/Cubietrucks for instance?
Ref.:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors...
Best regards, James
Using non standard data center equipment is a great way to add costs.
Naw, it's a great idea. Let's switch to building our own ARM-based servers (by the way, which have already been a flop commercially), using only unproven, low-volume available motherboards and having to buy and assemble all of the rest of the components. And then of course, we need to design our own cases... and since these have such a low performance, we'll need to have a lot more rack and datacenter space, of course which comes with a cost... and we'll have to figure out how to run our caching layers which require large amounts of memory... and our storage layers which require large amounts of disk space..... At that point we'll probably need to redesign those boards which are incapable of doing these things, so we'll need a team of hardware engineers, plus a deal with a manufacturing plant.
So... I think with about a 100 million dollar per year research budget we can do this. Who's ponying up? ;)
Funny huh?
If we use free software, I don't see why we can't move to open-source hardware ASAP.
As for security given the limited resources the WMF has whenever GCHQ,
FSB
and MSS have wanted to get in they have and there is nothing we can do about this. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Leslie Carr Wikimedia Foundation AS 14907, 43821 http://as14907.peeringdb.com/
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On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Emilio J. Rodríguez-Posada < emijrp@gmail.com> wrote:
Naw, it's a great idea. Let's switch to building our own ARM-based servers (by the way, which have already been a flop commercially), using only unproven, low-volume available motherboards and having to buy and assemble all of the rest of the components. And then of course, we need to design our own cases... and since these have such a low performance, we'll need to have a lot more rack and datacenter space, of course which comes with a cost... and we'll have to figure out how to run our caching layers which require large amounts of memory... and our storage layers which require large amounts of disk space..... At that point we'll probably need to redesign those boards which are incapable of doing these things, so we'll need a team of hardware engineers, plus a deal with a manufacturing plant.
So... I think with about a 100 million dollar per year research budget we can do this. Who's ponying up? ;)
Funny huh?
If we use free software, I don't see why we can't move to open-source hardware ASAP.
Well, I think Leslie just listed a few, but I'll recap: - low-availability - Requires in house assembly - Requires in house design capacity - Substantially more rack and datacenter space required - Insufficient for caching and storage layers - Cost of manufacturing.
pb
On 29/12/2013 22:41, Philippe Beaudette wrote:
On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Emilio J. Rodríguez-Posada < emijrp@gmail.com> wrote:
Naw, it's a great idea. Let's switch to building our own ARM-based servers (by the way, which have already been a flop commercially), using only unproven, low-volume available motherboards and having to buy and assemble all of the rest of the components. And then of course, we need to design our own cases... and since these have such a low performance, we'll need to have a lot more rack and datacenter space, of course which comes with a cost... and we'll have to figure out how to run our caching layers which require large amounts of memory... and our storage layers which require large amounts of disk space..... At that point we'll probably need to redesign those boards which are incapable of doing these things, so we'll need a team of hardware engineers, plus a deal with a manufacturing plant.
So... I think with about a 100 million dollar per year research budget we can do this. Who's ponying up? ;)
Funny huh?
If we use free software, I don't see why we can't move to open-source hardware ASAP.
Well, I think Leslie just listed a few, but I'll recap:
- low-availability
- Requires in house assembly
- Requires in house design capacity
- Substantially more rack and datacenter space required
- Insufficient for caching and storage layers
- Cost of manufacturing.
Add to the list people that know what they are doing.
On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 4:55 AM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Can we please stop paying the Microsoft and NSA taxes and start buying datacenter equipment which costs a lot less? Cubieboard/Cubietrucks for instance?
Ref.:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors...
Cubie are not credible enterprise-grade hardware; having made the suggestion indicates you don't understand what large server farm design and operations are all about.
One can see signs of a movement towards enterprise-grade lower power CPU systems such as Atom, ARM, and Via chip mini-servers. It's not there yet. Both hardware and OS issues with the ARMs, and hardware with the others.
On 29/12/13 23:55, James Salsman wrote:
Can we please stop paying the Microsoft and NSA taxes and start buying datacenter equipment which costs a lot less? Cubieboard/Cubietrucks for instance?
Ref.: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors...
That article doesn't say Dell equipment has a back door, it just says that there is surveillance software or hardware designed to work with Dell equipment. It doesn't even say that Dell equipment is especially vulnerable.
"There is no information in the documents seen by SPIEGEL to suggest that the companies whose products are mentioned in the catalog provided any support to the NSA or even had any knowledge of the intelligence solutions."
-- Tim Starling
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Tinfoil hat time!
Yes, the NSA stuff is a big deal, but saying that we're paying taxes to Microsoft and the NSA? Even if you mean taxes in a figurative sense, someone would be getting money from the WMF to buy hardware, and if the NSA can backdoor Dell, they could easily backdoor whatever hardware that gets used instead, if they really wanted to.
Arguably, cheaper or in-house hardware could end up being easier to backdoor or exploit. - -- Sincerely, Andrew "FastLizard4" Adams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:FastLizard4 FastLizard4@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0x221A627DD76E2616
On 12/29/2013 4:55 AM, James Salsman wrote:
Can we please stop paying the Microsoft and NSA taxes and start buying datacenter equipment which costs a lot less? Cubieboard/Cubietrucks for instance?
Ref.: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors...
Best regards, James
The WMF's servers have nothing to do with Microsoft.
There do exist alternative processor architectures, not even just ARM (Itanium (probably too expensive), Tilera (massively parallel)), but I don't think migrating our software (particularly Labs' virtualization-related software) to them is trivial.
One should also ask whether the NSA is snooping on our transit links and our peering IXPs (Google is encrypting their own fiber, as well as their transit links, for that reason).
On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 4:55 AM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Can we please stop paying the Microsoft and NSA taxes and start buying datacenter equipment which costs a lot less? Cubieboard/Cubietrucks for instance?
Ref.:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors...
Best regards, James _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Putting aside the 'tax' aspect, whether or not there is a backdoor in the shipped product is not the point of the article you linked to James.
NSA is intercepting hardware deliveries and adding backdoors while it is enroute from supplier to customer. Buying new equipment gives NSA a new opportunity to inject backdoors unless WMF has staff watching the entire manufacturing and delivery process.
The latest revelations give details of only a few of NSAs capabilities. Eliminating the now known threats, and all the other possible vectors is not feasible.
A more sensible strategy is to put perimeters around sets of private data, and watch your own equipment for unusual activity, with more focus on outbound than was previously thought necessary by most organisations. The extreme end is using trusted operating systems, tagging all data and network interfaces & software preventing unapproved data transits.
WMF already has serious network traffic analytics and monitoring. Maybe some more rules and alerts are needed, but everyone is reviewing how suspicious they should be of their 'own' internal equipment now. On Dec 29, 2013 7:56 PM, "James Salsman" jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Can we please stop paying the Microsoft and NSA taxes and start buying datacenter equipment which costs a lot less? Cubieboard/Cubietrucks for instance?
Ref.:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors...
Best regards, James _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
* James Salsman wrote:
Can we please stop paying the Microsoft and NSA taxes and start buying datacenter equipment which costs a lot less? Cubieboard/Cubietrucks for instance?
Related: https://twitter.com/DellCares/status/417812096072818688.
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