schof's comments

I fully reject that "Why bring a child into this world facing..." argument. (And I'm going to skip the fact that this is probably the best time in the history of the world to be born.) Sure there are big problems in the world. My son may help FIX some of those problems.

And if not, he may end up being the mayor of Bartertown.

My question is about this line:

> When you close your account, we will immediately destroy all your personal information and won't keep any backup.

I'd love to hear how you're purging users from your backups, and how long you keep backups.

What about the weather? Seems like a wonderful place in Summer, but frighteningly cold in Winter. (Both my wife and I are from warm places.)

I'm actually puzzled by all the Linode-bashing here. I'm not personally a Linode customer (or associated with them in any way) but this seems like a good thing.

To my knowledge (and I may have missed something) Linode is one of the first VPS providers to do IPV6. So I thought this was awesome.

If lots of other VPS providers start doing IPV6, and don't charge for a /64, or charge less than Linode does, Linode will have to change their fees or lose customers. But until that happens, why bash Linode for an as-yet unspecified charge?

So. I submit a vuln that says "Product X has vulnerability Y."

The vendor decrypts this, and marks it as fixed in your database by submitting "decrypted" text that says "I like ponies."

I'm amazed nobody has mentioned the "Practice of System and Network Administration" book by Limoncelli and Hogan.

Highly recommended.

http://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration...

Krav Maga, Kali, boxing, and bits of Muay Thai and Wing Chun; Python, BASH, and a bit of C.

Dakim, Inc. is the leading provider of brain fitness among America's senior living providers. We help seniors use rigorous cognitive exercise to prevent or slow the development of dementia. At least, that's what our marketing people say. I say it slightly differently: "We help seniors remember their grandchildren for a few months or years longer than they would otherwise."

We started in 2005, are venture-funded, and are not yet profitable. We're raising our 2nd round of venture funding right now. All employees get stock options, and we have medical, dental, and vision coverage.

We're looking for people who will work out of our Santa Monica, CA office. It's a casual office environment with really good coffee, and people often bring their dogs in to work. Today there's a Neapolitan Mastiff (http://twitpic.com/cwjfl) and a Chihuahua here.

Our touchscreen appliance (visible in the picture at the link above) runs Ubuntu Linux, and most of our infrastructure is Linux-based, with a few Windows (SQL Server) and OS X boxes. Our GUI software is written in REALbasic, and our system administration scripts are BASH and Python.

We're also in the process of developing a software-only installable product that will run on OS X and Windows.

Our desktops are OS X or Linux (your choice) with two big-ass monitors per person. We do well (but not 100%) on the Joel test, and are always looking for ways to make our work more efficient and productive.

Our biggest need right now is for someone in a combined Linux System Administration and QA Automation role. This would entail everything from installing and configuring Postfix to automating install testing for our Windows product.

We're also looking for QA Engineers for the Windows/OS X Product, and for additional support people, again, with Windows and OS X experience. Linux experience for both the QA Engineers and the support people is a huge plus.

To avoid getting put in the "Craigslist" mountain of resumes, send a cover letter and resume directly to me: schof at dakim.com

I have never (and would never) ask a candidate to allow me access to a private profile. However, I have rejected a candidate for what they posted on their blog.

Posting things on the public Internet that reflects poorly on the candidate shows a judgment issue that is a valid reason for rejecting a candidate.

In the case I'm thinking of, a cursory Google search on a candidate I would otherwise have hired showed that he had at least one job that he had quit without notice; this job was not listed on his resume. In addition, this first-person blog stated that he had shown up to work so hungover he could barely see, on more than one occasion.

Should I have hired this person, given the red flags I found via Google and that there were other equally-qualified candidates who did not have those red flags?

I'm an experienced Debian/Ubuntu guy, and decided to start playing with OpenBSD. A hardware compatibility issue[1] made me go back to Ubuntu Server, but I came away with two main impressions:

1) It's actually pretty easy to install, once you get past the whole "it's different" bit. I had no real trouble.

2) Updating/upgrading is a PITA. Having to upgrade by patching source code -- WTF?

What do you do if you have a fleet of 100s of OpenBSD machines? I may be spoiled by apt, but I can upgrade the several hundred machines I'm responsible for in an almost trivial manner. (And updating a single machine with apt is absolutely trivial.) That doesn't seem to be possible with OpenBSD. (I suppose you could write a custom shell script to do the update, and distribute that to your machines, but...certainly not trivial.)

What's more, I would be willing (if not completely comfortable) to update a remote Ubuntu/Debian box to the next release -- that doesn't seem like a good idea (or even possible under some circumstances) with OpenBSD.

This seems even stranger when you consider the security reputation of OpenBSD, and how important updates are for security, even for something as well-audited and well-written as OpenBSD.

Am I missing something here?

[1] http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/openbsd-misc/2009/2/8/4924...

The classic answer (I don't know if Charlie actually said this, or some other wit came up with it): "I don't pay them to have sex with me, I pay them to leave afterward."

Also, you see a vastly different picture if you click the "values" link rather than the "percent" link. Not sure why.

I've had a similar experience. Not 100% reproducible -- more like 5% -- but annoying when it happens. Ubuntu 8.04, Firefox 3.0.3.

What areas are ripe for this sort of consulting? (Ignoring the fact that if you go into an area to make money rather than because you're rabidly interested in it, it's probably a bad idea.)

It seems there are two characteristics that would make an area ripe for this -- companies needing it badly, and some (real or perceived) barrier to entry that keeps legions of geeks from learning it.

Any other likely candidates?

I speak Spanish and English (native English speaker) and was thinking of adding Chinese, until I read this: http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html

Now I'm thinking about French.

nearlyfreespeech.net.

Highly recommended, professional, and cheap. But a little on the BOFH side -- will refer to you to a FAQ instead of actually answering your dumb question. Since I'm a BOFH myself, we get along great.

Looking to meet up with geeks in Los Angeles too. Any suggestions?