Updates on the Security frontier.. August 29, 2007
Posted by Andrew Berkuta in Security Screams.1 comment so far
As you can tell, I have not been keeping up with things – Sorry! Have picked up on travel and visiting customers, presenting at events, etc. That aside, I did learn some interesting things and see some interesting trends out there.
1) Virtualization: Seems like it is in the front of many minds these days. VM-Ware is the dominant provider. Securing the virtual space is a big concern especially when working in a server environment. Leave it to Microsoft to try and muscle into the VM business, and either try and buy VM, or develop it and sue VM for copyright infringements! LOL 
2) Encryption: Yet another technology that is considered by customers, and is being driven to directions which were not in scope of their original purpose. Not a bad direction, but one which will task the computer and degrade performance. When locking down hard drives, you have to encrypt and decrypt the data. A few weak spots I see. First, there is latency with the encrypt/decrypt of the information and committing it to the writable media. If you are a bank, or something that must insure integrity of the transaction, this latency could be cause for conscern if there is disruption. Then you have to have a journaling type of system to roll back and play back each transaction. That costs money, time , and resources. Secondly, the thing people don’t like to consider – what if drives get corrupted, or break, or need some type of recover, and the hash is corrupted? You’ve nuked the drive and data on it! It becomes unrecoverable. Storing the key on a floppy, reders the encryption useless because that breaches the compliance requirements of keeping the keys private. All you would have to do is have someone throw out the disk, or steal it, and you are toast.
3) Consolidation: Many executives I have spoken with, have complimented McAfee on their efforts in leading the charge in the industry on consolidation. Reduction of management consoles. Reduction of resources at the host. Consolidation without compromise in security. I see this as a continuing trend, and which will seriously gain ground in the security space as executives unify their security portfolios.
More to come. I am just glad to be back able to type after this drought!
Cheers!
Not enough vacation to enjoy… August 29, 2007
Posted by Andrew Berkuta in Camping Stuff.add a comment
We are SO enjoying our Outback (25 RSS) Travel trailer! It is a home away from home! We have visited for the second time Oconee State Park in South Carolina. Here is our impression of the camping area:
- Spots are a bit tighter than other state parks we visited, but do accomodate 5th wheelers well
- They have mini golf there, swiming , and fishing, just to name a few things.
- facilities: clean restrooms, and reasonable supply store. (You could go into Seneca which has the traditional “Super Wal-Mart).
- It is located not far from town, and the park itself is up the mountains, so make sure your tow rig is up to the task! Town has all amenities (hardware, grocery, gas, dollar stores, restaurants,etc) so you can get what you need in a pinch.
-Ask the park ranger for some good spots to eat – they hooked us up with two restaurants which we went back to a few times: One was a down home cooking restuarant which was inexpensive, but good southern food. The second was a BBQ place which was cash only, but a real BBQ place called Varsity (no NOT like the one in Atlanta!). Get the corn balls. They were GOOD, as well as the BBQ platters.
-sites: Not much in the way of historic stuff, however, they did have an incomplete train tunnel built just before the civil war which you could walk in. Be warned, however, to bring a powerful flash light. Interesting, but very dark if you dont have one. There are a bunch of fish hatcheries, which kids love to visit when feeding time is in session.
Summary: Nice place to go when you want to get away, turn the cell phones off, and relax. This one is on our list for revisits.
Engine Sense.. Making HP! August 29, 2007
Posted by Andrew Berkuta in Classic Cars.add a comment
I was watching a TV show called “American Muscle Cars” which had an interesting interview about the correlation between more horsepower and better airflow. They went on to say that the Muscle car era (60’s & 70’s) Detroit increased the engines HP ratings, and then used tricks like Ram Air / Forced Air which reminded me about what an engine really is: An Air pump! It must ingest and extract enough air to combine with the raw fuel, mix it up properly, to privide combustion which becomes power. The more air one can compress into the chamber, the more usable oxegen there is to help make more combusion and therefore more power. it then must extract the spent air/gas through the exhaust.
Gale Banks was interviewed and gave some interesting stats. I will try and remember them:
- every two strokes (out of four), the engine moves X amount of Cubic Inches (it’s displacement) of air.
-Compression ratio is the volume of air compressed to 1 unit of fuel. e.g. (12.5:1 – air to fuel)
- Ram air/Turbo/ SuperCharger comment: Forcing air (compressing) increases are 1lb compression yields 7% gain. e.g. a supercharger would be set at 10 Lbs would yield a 70% performance gain.
-Cold intake: For every 10 degrees reduction in intake temperature, air density increases and yields a 1% improvement in performance gain. e.g. if you put a cold air intake vs. normal carb OEM /stock filter setup, you see a 10 – 20 HP increase.
-Restrictions ie: the “brick wall”: At some point, power will be restricted by either pre-detonation from octane ratings (or lack thereof) OR physical limitation (like engine block, heads, gaskets, rings, valves, etc). If you run a high compression engine, with high octane, you have high horsepower, HOWEVER you better have strong parts, or you will hit the tolerances of the parts, and cause physical fatigue. Reciprocally, you may have a physically strong engine, and run pump gas, but limit your horsepower, or even in these cases, must have high octane rated gas to prevent pre-detonation (pinging or engine knock) which will cause deposits, and premature parts (valves, etc) to warp or break.
These are some of the things I learned on the show. Makes sense! I hope these helped you too! Let me know!
Cheers!
