Orb Designs Graffiti, a Daily Blog - January 10, 2005 thru January 16, 2005

GRAFFITI -- January 10, 2005 thru January 16, 2005

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Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. About eMail - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message.

MONDAY Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
January 10, 2005

1407 - Good err, afternoon. I wrote this earlier, but forgot to press the GO button. Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming. I found the following on a local software shop's website yesterday evening. The topic of this page was Section 508 compliance:

 [Question:] Is there a preference for a product that strictly meets the 
 technical provisions of Subpart B over a product that provides the 
 same or greater accessibility through equivalent facilitation?

 [Answer:] No. Purchase of either EIT product would satisfy an agency's 
 obligations under section 508. Award should be made to the source 
 whose offer is most advantageous to the Government based on the 
 agency's source selection criteria (which would include cost or price 
 and may include quality).

Hmmm, let me check... yes, that's not a mis-quote. On this page in the www.Section508.gov site, it clearly states the rules of aquisition: First, comply with Accessibility Standards. Then, rank your source selection by price. Finally, if you must, use quality as the determining factor. I am so NOT surprised that my tax dollars are being spent in such a bass-ackwards way. QUALITY FIRST, YOU MORONS!!! Otherwise you end up with the kind of quality system that allows a flight controller notification system to require manual rebooting of the computer before a counter goes to zero and crashes the system ... oh, wait, that happened, didn't it?

Yeah, I got Marcia out and to the airport on time this morning. We're all going to miss her horribly through the week, in-between watching a bunch of Disney dog movies, eating popcorn and generally ignoring all our chores. Did I mention that Molly's webpage finally made it online this last weekend?

There's a Linux kernel vulnerability out and about. Here's some LKML conversation on the topic. I posted some about it over on LinuxMuse. I also want to note that neither Greg nor I have been able to get the exploit to function on any of the test systems we run for this purpose. That pretty well covers the Debian and RHEL 3 range. FYI.

bilbrey@bullseye:~$ ./elflbl 

    child 1 VMAs 0
[+] moved stack bfffe000, task_size=0xc0000000, map_base=0xbf800000
[+] vmalloc area 0xcfc00000 - 0xdf6e4000

[-] FAILED: try again (Cannot allocate memory) 
Killed

Now I need to get some work done, as I've got to bail out a little early today (and every day this week), I can't leave the dogs to cross their legs for 13 hours at a time. Ciao!

Top / Email Brian

Mon TUESDAY Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
January 11, 2005

0641 - Good morning. Yesterday's work was a blur of reconditioning machines, retiring some, bringing others back from the brink, zeroing out all the hard disks using DBAN, on and on. Before I knew it, 1600 hours rolled around and I needed to bail out to get home and let the mutts uncross their legs. They spent most of yesterday evening perched on or about the garage door where Marcia is expected to walk in at any moment. Poor girls just don't understand when I say "four more days".

In the evening, I comforted dogs, prepared bulk meat for the freezer, comforted the dogs, cooked and ate some stir fry, and comforted the dogs. That pretty much used up the whole evening. Admittedly, I was pretty low energy from getting up at 0500 yesterday.

If you're worried about that reported Linux kernel vulnerability, and you're competent to compile your own kernel, head over to the 2.6.10-ac directory, pick up -ac8, apply it to your 2.6.10 vanilla kernel.org tree, compile and roll-on. As Alan notes:

If you want a patch right now grab the -ac patches (they also fix a pile of other less holes found including the grsecurity ones). The -ac version of the fix should be complete but it won't be the final one in the master tree (I get to nail holes shut Linus has to do the right engineering for the long term 8))

Now to work with me. I've a learning opportunity today, and I'd be loath to miss out on any of the action. Have a great day!

Top / Email Brian

Mon Tues WEDNESDAY Thu Fri Sat Sun
January 12, 2005

0650 - Good morning. Marcia called last night to let us know she was staying over another day to spend some time with her friend Pat. So I had to tell the girls again that Marcia would be home in just 4 days. I hope they either can't count, or simply can't remember what I told them such a long time ago (yesterday, eh?). We did make it out for a nice 40 minute long walk last night, it was past dark when we got back, but the dogs were tired enough to be calm, which doesn't happen much when Marcia's gone - they tend to be a bit antsy.

I glarfed on Monday about the chunk of Section 508 fact that appeared to leave quality dead last in the specification of stuff for purchase by the Federales. Yeah, I know that I was a bit over the top ... that's a good place to be, as everyone else falls first, and I might land on some(one|thing) soft. But a knowledgable voice spoke up out of the wilderness:

Well, speaking as a government employee who's had the dubious pleasure of messing with contracts (Contracting Officer's Technical Representative) and gets the refresher course in contracting every year or two like it or not, there's quality, and there's quality. The Agency's minimum requirements (Accessibility standards, Sect. 508, in this case) in the RFP spell out a minimum accepatable level of performance, including reliability (quality, is it not?). We *may* consider whether offeror A's proposal exceeds the standards, but must weigh that against the lower price of Offeror B's proposal which just meets the minimum acceptable. But if Offeror C doesn't met those minimum standards, they're out. But spec it out too closely in every single particular, leaving out none and you end up with $600 toilet seats. Leave "quality", unspecified, as the first criterion and every losing bidder will be sueing to get the contract overturned. So we set minimum standards which *must* be met, and allow, but do not require, exceeding those standards to be used in selection criteria. Somebody may shove reliability out one more decimal point, but if it costs 500% more than the offer for the ballpoint pen which is "only" 99.999% reliable, is it worth it? Or, while a titanium handle on a fire rake may represent ultimately higher quality (stronger, possibly lighter weight, better rigidity, more resistant to fire) than a simple hickory or fiberglass one, would you really want me to order several hundred thousand of the former for USDA Forest Service firefighters on an annual or biennial basis? I didn't think so.

By the way, if you're referring to the scheduling system for USAir which crashed over the holidays, that was a product of, by, and for private industry. I'm not saying that we don't sometimes miss a criterion, but we are expected not to. But sometimes systems outlast their expected life cycles (witness Y2K).

Where the stupidity comes in is in the push to outsource everything. We need to have people competent to draw up those initial standards so that minimum quality is included. And if you outsource all the work they'd really rather be doing, they're going to follow. That brings us to the, um, interesting, position of having to issue a contract for development of the technical requirements for the project or product we need to acquire. And *that* means someone's got to develop *those* standards. And clearly the party developing the standards can't bid on the RFP for which they're used, but what about the contract that's issued to write technical specs for a RFP using the standards developed under the contract arising from the first RFP? So why am I (and others like me) still with the government? Because our bosses, whatever their level of technical expertise, know enough to realize that they need, despite what Congress and the President may say, *some* in-house technical experts, and they need to be able to keep things interesting enough that we'll forego the higher salaries we'd be able to bring in as "Beltway Bandits".

Should you choose to quote/post the third paragraph, I'd prefer it be kept anonymous. No problems with anything in the first, although I am not in USDA Forest Service so don't know if their fire rake standards specify, or allow, titanium handles.

Thanks again, good information and I'm glad to have it. I guess I thought since Reagan had been able to fire all of the Aircraft Controllers back in the 1980's, that particular function of the transportation system was Federalized. My bad.

On deeper thought, I'd suspect that no matter *how well* titanium handles stand up to heat, they'd conduct far too much of it up the handle to the actual fire-fighting person. I'd much prefer that we specify Unobtainium-437, which has all of the better qualities of a titanium-handled fire rake, and additionally is a perfect insulator against thermal transmission. Don't confuse it with Unobtanium-439, which is a perfect semiconductor. Yeah, I mean that you generate a little bit of static charge, ground your rake to earth, and draw lightning from the sky ... once.

That wasn't the end of the mails...

Good NEWS!!!

With the Blue States in hand, the Democrats have firm control of 80% of the country's fresh water, over 90% of our pineapple and lettuce, 92% of all fresh fruit production, 93% of the artichoke production, 95% of America's export quality wines, 90% of all cheese production, 90% of the high tech industry, most of the US low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech and MIT. We can live simply but well.

The Red States, on the other hand, now have to cope with 88% of all obese Americans (and their projected health care cost spike), 92% of all US mosquitoes, 100% of all tornadoes, 90% of all hurricanes, 99% of all Southern Baptists, and 100% of all Televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. A high price to pay for controlling the presidency.

Additionally, 38% of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually eaten by a whale, 62% believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44% believe that evolution is just a theory, 53% that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11 and most hard to grasp, 61% believe that Bush is a person of moral conviction.

Heh. And note that surfing never even came up... I'll also have to piddle in the pot a little bit. It's not 100% of the tornados that happen in Jesusland, as there've been recent tornados both in California and Maryland. But clearly Tornado Alley is deep in the heart of Red territory.

Work was, yesterday, and looks like more of the same today. I'd best get to it. Ciao!

Top / Email Brian

Mon Tues Wed THURSDAY Fri Sat Sun
January 13, 2005

0642 - Hullo. I learned yesterday that we lost my friend Brian Cheesman, back on December 22 of 2004. I'm going to miss his thoughtful and erudite missives. We corresponded enough for me to know we would have gotten on famously in person, good choices in naming aside. That's all I want to say today, so I'll be quiet now. Love your friends and families, you don't know how long you'll have them. Ciao!

Top / Email Brian

Mon Tues Wed Thu FRIDAY Sat Sun
January 14, 2005

0912 - Good morning. We took a lot of rain last night, from 2 to 5 inches around the greater DC Metro area. Lots of flooding and road closures this morning. It's still raining, and there are flash-flood alerts up through noonish. There were even some tornado watches and warnings through south central Maryland in the wee hours, expiring at about the time I got on the road, shortly after 0630. More pertinent to my situation here, we've got water infiltration well inside the building, here on the second floor of three. Over my desk, and a nearby cube (they took the worst of it). So I'm on water abatement patrol and haven't much time. See you later!

Top / Email Brian

Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri SATURDAY Sun
January 15, 2005

1120 - Good morning. First, a news item that caught my eye...

The FBI said on Thursday it may have to scrap a new $170 million computer program designed to allow agents to share information instantly and fix a main problem identified after the Sept. 11 attacks.

And the name of that program? I was guessing an unpatched Windows XP box connected directly to the Internet, as that would be online and sharing information with damn-near anyone in something around a quarter of an hour, without intervention by the installing party. Mmmmm. Lessee, a full-ride copy of Windows XP costs perhaps a hundred bucks in that sort of volume. So that implies an agent count of 1.7 million. That doesn't work out right: The total number of FBI employees (as of last August) is only 28,576. Okay, that means that a 170 million dollar program for that number of employees comes out to a shade under 6 grand per seat. Wow, that's not inexpensive software. Are Bill or Steve brazen enough to charge 6 grand for each copy of Windows? Oh, further down in the story it says the name of the developed program is "Virtual Case File" and it's been developed since September 11, 2001. Who's been writing that program for the FBI? SAIC and CSC. They netted roughly 60 million dollars a year for three years between them, and by the time the software was done, it was obsolete for meeting the FBI's needs. Is that the vendor's fault? Not likely, although there was a re-engineering of the project over a year ago, probably with fingers pointing in all directions. Do they get to bid over on the new gig that's certain to be awarded as a result? Probably... Maybe the FBI ought to just install Windows XP.

I did get the living room rearranged one evening this week. The original layout had the television and display cabinets flat against the far wall, a sofa to each side, and the easy chair out of this view down left, facing the TV. Open shelving holding all the DVDs and CDs were against the right wall. While it was a pretty good TV room, it was not conversationally friendly. Even though it's a small room, (and it is a small room, that cabinetry really overwhelms the space, but it's important to Marcia, so it stays), having all the seating in the farthest spaces meant non-cosy. By moving the cabinets into the left wallspace, I was able to arrange the seating into a "J", which is much more friendly. One of the tall shelves is out of sight down left now, with the DVDs in it. The music is likely to find a new home elsewhere in the house, as I'm likely to network in a music server to the amplifier one day soon. Then setting up a party is as simple as selecting a playlist and off we go. The two pictures above the sofa on the far wall are watercolor floral. They aren't enough for the space in and of themselves. I'm thinking some sort of wall-mounted sculpture....

Marcia's home tonight, but in the interim I've got chores that can't wait, and dogs that want attention. I'd best attend to one or both. Have a great day!

Top / Email Brian

Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat SUNDAY
January 16, 2005

1002 - Good morning. Marcia's home, safe and sound. All of us barked excitedly, bounced about and sniffed madly at all those foreign smells. Then we contentedly curled up and went to sleep, which is where I lasted until about 0600 this morning, when I awoke with a screaming headache - combo sinus and neck tension. By 0630 Molly and I were up and out. I took something for the headache, then Molly and I watched TV for an hour or so. Molly made me go upstairs and get Lucy so that everyone important (the four-legged denizens) could have breakfast together. Then I made coffee and we trooped back upstairs to wake Marcia properly, with lots of face-licking. Today we've got shopping and laundry to do. Yesterday I cleaned, so that's done. I have no idea what other sorts of trouble I might find today, so I won't pretend to predict. Have a lovely day!

Top / Email Brian

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Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.

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GRAFFITI -- January 10, 2005 thru January 16, 2005

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