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Databases

Python-LMDB In a High-Performance Environment 98

Posted by Soulskill from the fast-enough-to-cause-drama dept.
lkcl writes: In an open letter to the core developers behind OpenLDAP (Howard Chu) and Python-LMDB (David Wilson) is a story of a successful creation of a high-performance task scheduling engine written (perplexingly) in Python. With only partial optimization allowing tasks to be executed in parallel at a phenomenal rate of 240,000 per second, the choice to use Python-LMDB for the per-task database store based on its benchmarks, as well as its well-researched design criteria, turned out to be the right decision. Part of the success was also due to earlier architectural advice gratefully received here on Slashdot. What is puzzling, though, is that LMDB on Wikipedia is being constantly deleted, despite its "notability" by way of being used in a seriously-long list of prominent software libre projects, which has been, in part, motivated by the Oracle-driven BerkeleyDB license change. It would appear that the original complaint about notability came from an Oracle employee as well.

Comment Re:Blade Servers aren't "new server platforms" (Score 1) 56

by Walking The Walk (#48167385) Attached to: Making Best Use of Data Center Space: Density Vs. Isolation

Heck, 13 years ago at a Canadian federal government job we swapped our web servers for blades.

Which was pretty bleeding-edge at the time, since the first blade server was 2001. So not sure what your point about the government is - they weren't late to the party, far from it.

If I hadn't posted on this story, I would mod the above interesting. I just assumed we were at least a couple of years behind the curve. We were buying off the shelf hardware, nothing custom.
Data Storage

Making Best Use of Data Center Space: Density Vs. Isolation 56

Posted by samzenpus from the best-of-both-worlds dept.
jfruh writes The ability to cram multiple virtual servers on a single physical computer is tempting — so tempting that many shops overlook the downsides of having so many important systems subject to a single point of physical failure. But how can you isolate your servers physically but still take up less room? Matthew Mobrea takes a look at the options, including new server platforms that offer what he calls "dense isolation."
Open Source

Confidence Shaken In Open Source Security Idealism 265

Posted by Soulskill from the with-many-eyes-something-something dept.
iONiUM writes: According to a few news articles, the general public has taken notice of all the recent security breaches in open source software. From the article: "Hackers have shaken the free-software movement that once symbolized the Web's idealism. Several high-profile attacks in recent months exploited security flaws found in the "open-source" software created by volunteers collaborating online, building off each other's work."

While it's true that open source means you can review the actual code to ensure there's no data-theft, loggers, or glaring security holes, that idealism doesn't really help out most people who simply don't have time, or the knowledge, to do it. As such, the trust is left to the open source community, and is that really so different than leaving it to a corporation with closed source?"
Power

Wind Power Is Cheaper Than Coal, Leaked Report Shows 610

Posted by Soulskill from the tilting-at-coalmills dept.
merbs writes: A leaked report shows wind is the cheapest energy source in Europe, beating the presumably dirt-cheap coal and gas by a mile. Conventional wisdom holds that clean energy is more expensive than its fossil-fueled counterparts. Yet cost comparisons show that renewable energy sources are often cheaper than their carbon-heavy competition. The report (PDF) demonstrates that if you were to take into account mining, pollution, and adverse health impacts of coal and gas, wind power would be the cheapest source of energy.
Privacy

The Correct Response To Photo Hack Victim-Blamers 622

Posted by samzenpus from the who's-to-blame dept.
Bennett Haselton writes As commenters continue to blame Jennifer Lawrence and other celebrities for allowing their nude photos to be stolen, there is only one rebuttal to the victim-blaming which actually makes sense: that for the celebrities taking their nude selfies, the probable benefits of their actions outweighed the probable negatives. Most of the other rebuttals being offered, are logically incoherent, and, as such, are not likely to change the minds of the victim-blamers. Read below to see what Bennett has to say.
Books

Ask Slashdot: Best Books On the Life and Work of Nikola Tesla? 140

Posted by timothy from the you-mean-the-ones-they-haven't-hidden-from-you dept.
An anonymous reader writes The internet is full of interesting nuggets of info about Nikola Tesla's life and scientific exploits: The time a young Tesla improved an electric motor for Edison, and Edison simply would not pay Tesla the monetary reward he had promised him earlier. The friction between Tesla and wealthy industrialist J.P. Morgan, and Tesla's friendship with (kinder) industrialist George Westinghouse. The 2 different times Tesla's main laboratory burned to the ground. The time a Tesla lab experiment reportedly caused a small earthquake to trigger in lower Manhattan. Tesla's (never quite fulfilled) dream of transmitting electricity across great distances without using wires or cables, etc. All this fascinating stuff, and more, about Tesla's life is out there, mostly in shortish snippets — and sometimes woven into outright conspiracy theories — on the internet for anyone to examine. Now to my question: What are the best books to read to get a fuller picture of Nikola Tesla's life and work? Preferably something well researched and factually accurate. Are there any good documentaries or movies (apart from David Bowie playing a wizard-like Tesla in "The Prestige")? Why is Thomas Edison so well known and covered in education/popular culture, and the equally prolific and ingenious Tesla a "mysterious and ghostly figure" by comparison?
The Internet

CSS Proposed 20 Years Ago Today 180

Posted by Soulskill from the i-like-your-cascading-style dept.
An anonymous reader writes: On 10 October 1994, Opera CTO Hakon Lie posted a proposal for Cascading HTML style sheets. Now, two decades on, CSS has become one of the modern web's most important building blocks. The Opera dev blog just posted an interview with Lie about how CSS came to be, and what he thinks of it now. He says that if these standards were not made, "the web would have become a giant fax machine where pictures of text would be passed along." He also talks about competing proposals around the same time period, and mentions his biggest mistake: not producing a test suite along with the CSS1 spec. He thinks this would have gotten the early browsers to support it more quickly and more accurately. Lie also thinks CSS has a strong future: "New ideas will come along, but they will extend CSS rather than replace it. I believe that the CSS code we write today will be readable by computers 500 years from now."
Bug

Ask Slashdot: Dealing With an Unresponsive Manufacturer Who Doesn't Fix Bugs? 204

Posted by Soulskill from the complain-until-your-problem-is-their-problem dept.
moofo writes: I've had huge problems with a security appliance since its installation. Specifically, the VPN SSL client is causing a problem for the majority of my remote clients. The company acknowledged the bug, but they are jerking me around, and no resolution is in sight. I tried third-party clients, but I'm wary of using them since they are not distributed by the manufacturer, and they require some maintenance to keep working properly.

I also talked to various executives at the company and besides giving me apologies, nothing good is coming my way. It's been more than two years (on a three-year subscription that I can't terminate early), and this is continually causing me trouble and aggravation. It also makes my internal customers unhappy. How do you deal with a manufacturer who doesn't fix bugs in a reasonable time frame?
Crime

Europol Predicts First Online Murder By End of This Year 155

Posted by Soulskill from the need-a-sherlock-to-go-with-watson dept.
An anonymous reader sends this story from The Stack: The world's first "online murder" over an internet-connected device could happen by the end of this year, Europol has warned. Research carried out by the European Union's law enforcement agency has found that governments are not equipped to fight the growing threat of "online murder," as cyber criminals start to exploit internet technologies to target victims physically. The study, which was published last week, analyzed the possible physical dangers linked to cyber criminality and found that a rise in "injury and possible deaths" could be expected as computer hackers launch attacks on critical connected equipment. The assessment particularly referred to a report by IID, a U.S. security firm, which forecast that the world's first murder via a "hacked internet-connected device" would happen by the end of 2014.
Television

The Era of Saturday Morning Cartoons Is Dead 320

Posted by Soulskill from the every-day-is-saturday dept.
An anonymous reader writes Gizmodo published an article on Saturday pointing out that, with The CW having aired its last episodes of Vortexx cartoons last weekend, this is the first weekend in the United States with no Saturday morning cartoons playing on national broadcast stations. NBC stopped airing Saturday morning cartoons in 1992, CBS stopped shortly after, and ABC followed suit in 2004. Gizmodo failed to take into account the Public Broadcast Station (PBS), but during an age of instant online media access...and cable...the oversight is understandable because everyone has already moved on. TV is dead. Long live the Internet.

Comment That's "around chance", not "around change" (Score 1) 75

I couldn't figure out what this part of the summary meant:

accuracy dropped to 56% (around change)

Then I watched the video in the article, where they actually say:

Participants demonstrated 56% accuracy (around chance)

i.e.: 56% is pretty close to the 50% you'd expect from just guessing. That one letter makes a big difference.

Comment Re:Stolen by the FBI, not sold to them (Score 1) 67

by Walking The Walk (#48049319) Attached to: How Hackers Accidentally Sold a Pre-Release XBox One To the FBI

Reading comprehension is hard. The group built the mockup and sold it for $5000. The person who picked it up from them claimed to be an XBox enthusiast, but actually worked for the FBI.

Did you read to the end? I saw this quote:

While he was traveling in Prague, "I actually woke up, and lo and behold there is five grand sitting in my bank account," Wheeler said. "It came through, and we went 'OK!' and we sent it."

Where he said "we" (his group) sent it. Then I read the very next bit:

Around August 9, 2012, someone identified in the indictment as "Person A" went to Leroux's residence in Maryland and picked up the device. Person A was instructed to send the device to an address in the Seychelles. But Wheeler said he heard through the group that the package never arrived.

Where he said that "Person A was instructed to send the device" and "he heard through the group [xbox enthusiasts who paid for it] that the package never arrived." So the story says that a group paid for it, he gave it to someone with instructions to send it to that group, then the group said it never arrived. The article continues with:

According to the indictment, Person A -- whose real name Wheeler said he knows -- gave the package to the FBI.

So the guy was supposed to send it to the purchasers (who you'll recall complained that it never arrived), but he gave it to the FBI instead. There's a follow-on quote where Wheeler says the FBI bought the device, but that seems to contradicts his earlier statement that his first warning about being caught was that the purchasers complained the shipment never arrived.

Comment Re:Need to show intent (Score 1) 274

by Walking The Walk (#48049163) Attached to: Could Maroney Be Prosecuted For Her Own Hacked Pictures?

You can be convicted for just looking at pictures.

I'm assuming you're talking about someone else (e.g.: an adult) looking at the picture a child took of herself. Which would show that person's intent to use as child porn, right? But it wouldn't by itself show the child's intent to create or distribute the image as child port. The OP's point was about "[t]aking pictures of yourself", not looking at pictures. I think the OP was saying that if the person taking the selfie didn't intend for it to be shared, then the act of taking that pic wouldn't be considered as creating child porn.

The point makes sense to me, but I'm not a lawyer (and I live in Canada), so I can't comment on whether American law works like that.

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