Links August 2008

Michael Janke is writing a series of posts about estimating availability of systems, here is a link to the introduction [1]. He covers lots of things that people often miss (such as cooling). If you aren’t about to implement a system for reliability then it’s an interesting read. If you are about to implement a system where reliability is required and you have control of the system (not paying someone else to run it and hope for the best) then it’s an essential read. It will probably also be good to give this URL to managers who make decisions about such things.

Interesting summary of the connections between the Iraq war and the oil industry in the Reid Report [2]. The suggestion made by one of the sources she cites is that the intention of the war was to reduce the supply of Iraqi oil to increase prices. Sam Varghese has written an essay about this which summarises where the Iraqi oil goes [3]. It seems that half of Iraq’s oil goes to US military use, the other half is used domestically, and some oil is imported as well! So because of the US occupation the country with the second largest known oil reserves is importing petroleum products! If the US military was to cease operations world-wide then the oil price would drop significantly, this doesn’t just mean the occupation of Iraq and the various actions in South America, but also the bases in Germany and Japan.

Interesting paper by Alexander Sotirov and Mark Dowd about Bypassing Browser Memory Protection in Windows [4]. This paper is good for people who are interested in computer security but don’t generally use Windows (such as me), if you want to learn about the latest things happening in Windows land then this is a good place to start.

A well researched article by Rick Moen about the unintended effects of anti-gay-marriage laws [5]. Maybe some of the “conservatives” who advocate such laws should get themselves and their spouses tested. It would be amusing if someone like Rush Limbaugh turned out to be involved in a “gay marriage”.

What Sysadmins should know about exposure to hazardous materials [6]. High-level overview of the issues, probably a good start for some google searches to get the details.

Diamond John McCain is an interesting blog about the 73 year old (who was born in Panama) candidate in the US presidential election [7].

Update: Corrected my statement about Iraq’s oil reserves based on a comment by Sam.

• [1] http://lastinfirstout.blogspot.com/2008/07/estimating-availability-of-simple_04.html
• [2] http://blog.reidreport.com/2008/08/war-for-iraqi-oil.html
• [3] http://gnubies.com/comment/oil.html
• [4] http://taossa.com/archive/bh08sotirovdowd.pdf
• [5] http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/marriage.html
• [6] http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/networking/?p=637
• [7] http://diamondjohnmccain.blogspot.com/