Interesting Snippets from 2012-06-26

• Schneier on Security: Resilience

  Any system, whether it’s the financial system, the environmental system, or something else, is always subject to all kinds of pressures. If it can withstand those pressures without really changing its behavior, then it’s robust. When a system can’t withstand them anymore but can deal with them by integrating some changes so the pressures fall off and it can keep going, then it’s resilient. If it comes to the point where the only choices are to make fundamental structural changes or to cease existence, then it becomes vulnerable.

• An Upgrade Race for Data Centers - WSJ.com

  Traditionally, much of the intelligence for controlling data communications is spread around a network, managed by proprietary software that comes with each vendor's gear. In the SDN approach, those control functions are split off to be managed by one central program, which may be run on an inexpensive server system. Specialized switches and routers continue to handle other data-passing chores, but they don't need to be as sophisticated as most current hardware.

• How SSDs conquered mobile devices and modern OSes | Ars Technica

  One of the most important operating system features to arrive along with flash drives is support for TRIM. Though it's commonly written in all capitals, TRIM isn't an acronym; rather, it's the name of the ATA command that the operating system can send to the SSD controller to indicate that a certain page or set of pages contains stale data.

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