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HP

Submission + - Big Box Technician Lashes Out Against HP (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: A Big Box Technician speaks out against HP, and their warranty services provided by their retail stores.

From the article:
HP2: It looks like the week you put that claim in, we closed a service center, and opened another one. The label you got and used was a label to the wrong service center.
BBT: So the unit has been forwarded to the right service center by now, correct?
HP2: No.

Despite the PC vs Mac ideologies now, many wonder what the best retail PC is. In an effort to provide more information suitable for prospective buyers, this blog has condemned the use of HP products by means of their warranty service and customer service agents. I know next time I'm looking to buy something I'll keep this in mind.
Biotech

Submission + - Drink diet soda, develop metabolic syndrome (newsday.com)

Submitted by
Xemu
Xemu writes: "A study published yesterday in the American Heart Association's online journal Circulation found that people who drink one or more cans of diet soda a day were 48 percent more likely to develop "metabolic syndrome," including excessive abdominal fat, high blood-glucose levels, high blood pressure, high blood triglycerides and low levels of high-density lipoprotein. These conditions are believed to lead to heart disease. Soda makers, in a surprising move, rejects the study."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - GOATSE Picture Shown In YouTube Debate

Submitted by
Penguinshit
Penguinshit writes: "What makes the Internet so great, beyond showing a glimpse of a confusing world to millions of mouth-breathers? The answer, of course, is GOATSE (relax, this isn't THAT link...). One of those lame YouTube questions featured a split-second image of the horrible anus. As of this time, it is unclear as to how many Americans witnessed the outrage, but there are reports of as many as 200,000 phone calls made to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) reporting the obscenity. CNN has yet to make an official statement regarding the matter, but a top spokesman was reportedly overheard denouncing the incident as "despicable."

The story is being reported in several aggregators and blogs."
United States

Submission + - H1B Outsourcing - A Sad Day for America Worker (businessweek.com) 1

Submitted by acole4ns
acole4ns writes: Well, I know many of us have heard rumors about such practices, but the attached BusinessWeek article seems to confirm our worst fears about H1B abuses. This story highlights just how easy it is to bypass a well-qualified US worker and tap into the pool of lower-cost H1B workers. A single quote from the article sums it all up "[O]ur goal is clearly not to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker". This is a sad day for the American worker.
Businesses

Submission + - Enterprise Management with Open Source?

Submitted by HalfOfOne
HalfOfOne writes: This is a repeating topic on Slashdot (No, really, I'm saying that with a straight face) but one that can and should probably be revisited every once in awhile.

As part of my job, I get asked every few months/years how close we are to being able to deploy free open source solutions (OS and Software) for a large (4000+ users) manufacturing corporation. My background is origially with Unix, but I've come into a mostly MS shop, so this is going to sound like a strawman for MS, but it's not. I honestly want to see what's out there.

So, my question to AskSlashdot is, how do the free open source alternatives stack up? Give us your personal ancedotes and recommendations:

Some seed for the discussion:

*Desktop imaging, deployment, and management
You can't go to each desk, so how do you automatically and remotely roll out your desktop OS of choice, complete with configs and software? How do you keep it up to date with minimal user interaction? How do you inventory and keep control of what's added and removed from your environment?

*Centralized Directory Management
You don't use MS AD or NDS. What directrory store do you use to centrally manage security and store information for users, groups, and all of the other odds and ends that go into your schema? Can you support a single signon structure? Can you assign security so that only certain people can see or change certain objects? Can you distribute this internationally, does it replicate quickly and is it fault tolerant?

*Communication/collaboration software
Can any free email/scheduling/contact management software integrate with your directory store for email groups, contact lists, and other info?

*Server Monitoring/Management
Can you monitor the hardware health of your servers and have it automatically alert in case of a warning or failure?

*Consistency of Integration
How well does all of it tie together? Can the look and feel be made consistent across software suites and OSes? Can John Doe from marketing/sales figure out intuitively where most things are without calling the helpdesk.
Displays

Submission + - Man sues Gateway because he can't read EULA

Submitted by Scoopy
Scoopy writes: California resident Dennis Sheehan took Gateway to small claims court after he reportedly received a defective computer and little technical support from the PC manufacturer. Gateway responded with their own lawyer and a 2-inch thick stack of legal docs, and claimed that Sheehan violated the EULA, which requires that users give up their right to sue and settle these cases in private arbitration. Sheehan responded that he never read the EULA, which pops up when the user first starts the computer, because the graphics were scrambled — precisely the problem he had complained to tech support in the first place. A judge sided with Sheehan on May 24 and the case will proceed to small claims court.

A lawyer is quoted as saying that Sheehan, a high school dropout who is arguing his own case, is in for a world of hurt: 'This poor guy now faces daunting reality of having to litigate this on appeal against Gateway...By winning, he's lost.'
Enlightenment

Submission + - Students Develop Alcohol for Minors

Submitted by
poser101
poser101 writes: "Dutch students have developed powdered alcohol that when mixed with water creates a "bubbly, lime-colored and -flavored drink". The beverage contains 3 percent alcohol content and can be sold to minors under the age of 16. (The drinking age in the Netherlands is 16.)"
Security

Submission + - Wireless LAN security myths that won't die

Submitted by
maggard
maggard writes: "George Ou is a Ziff Davis / TechRepublic writer who actually knows his beat: Security.

Several years ago he wrote "The six dumbest ways to secure a wireless LAN", which articulated what most folks who do WiFi security (as opposed to repeat rumors about it) already knew. The article is still well regarded as a powerful document to be presented in IT staff discussions and to under-informed IT decision makers ("PHBs") dispelling accrued misinformation.

Ou has just written a follow-up column revisiting wireless security, what works, what is worth the effort, and what is just wasting time & effort that could be better spent on real security measures. Titled "Wireless LAN security myths that won't die" he makes strong cases against useless & even counter-productive WiFi security technologies & strategies.

Best of all, Ou names names and provides supporting hyperlinks, all in about 15 tightly written paragraphs. The entire article is well worth reading, however for general WiFi owners users the last two sentences in the article are probably the most important:

For small businesses and homes, all you need to do is use WPA-PSK security with a random alpha-numeric pass-phrase that's a minimum of 10 characters long. If WPA security isn't available to you, at least run WEP as a 10-minute deterrence mechanism.


I've regularly seen folks post here about how they're "hiding" their SSID "for security"; here's an easy introduction to the fact you're actually lessening your security by doing so. Also for those relying on static IP / MAC address filtering this is a reminder that all of your painful manual management, time that could have been spent on other more productive duties, can be trivially undone in a few seconds to minutes of automated cracking."
Power

Submission + - The Rapid Collapse of Mexico's Largest Oilfield

Submitted by
sfoucher
sfoucher writes: "Mexico is the second largest source of oil imports for the US. The last production numbers from PEMEX seems to confirm the rapid decline of the Cantarell oilfield as well as the inability of the Mexican to rapidly bring new production online. This could essentially end most Mexican crude oil exports by the end of 2012, depending on what happens to domestic consumption."
Businesses

Submission + - Big Company, Small Shop or Consulting?

Submitted by
c0d3r
c0d3r writes: "I'm curious to know what other peoples thoughts are on the differences between working for big companies, small shops or being self employed as a consultant as a software engineer. Personally, I am sick of working with major companies due to the corporate politics BS. I think I enjoyed working with pre-ipo's the best, and they offered the best hope of making a bunch of money on the options. Currently I'm pretty happy at a small shop as one of 2 developers where we do very little and go home early every day."
Lord of the Rings

Submission + - LOTRO "finished"

Submitted by
Cranboy
Cranboy writes: "The hands on preview in this issue of PCGZine, which is a free download magazine, reckons that The Lord of The Rings Online is finished. The previewer was show round Middle Earth by one of the developers and says "In essence, LOTRO is finished, with only a few minor AI issues and frustratingly missing NPCs taking the edge off the experience to date." The whole preview can be read in the PDF magazine."
Windows

Submission + - Vista/Intel NIC: VLAN not supported

Submitted by Anomalyst
Anomalyst writes: Nothing in Google groups or MS KB regarding +Vista +VLAN
From: http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/CS-023749. htm
"None of the Advanced Network Services, including Teaming and VLANs are supported under Windows Vista."
Even worse, conventional networking seems to be broken (ASUS P5NSLI both the Marvell on the MB and the Pro 1000 GT desktop NIC).
Using the Intel 8.1.50.0 (11/20/2006) drivers from WU, the NIC fails to get DHCP address on an untagged (vanilla, no 802.1Q VLAN on the switch port). Up to this point Intel has been very reliable in the VLAN and teaming (trunking) support on their adapters. We use VLANs pervasively in our our NOC administration and selectively at our customer sites.

Does this quote mean just Intel is not (currently) supporting it or is it truly a systemic loss of capability in Vista?
Does anyone have multiple VLANs on a NIC working?
If Intel can't seem to make it work what hope is there from other vendors?

Is this a short-term glitch or are we going to have even more vigilant with our customers whe Vista gets shoved down their throats when a new machine is purchased to replace a VLAN-ed host?
Security

Submission + - Getting rid of obsolete IT gear

Submitted by
bednarz
bednarz writes: "The threat of data loss, coupled with increasingly stringent environmental regulations, has IT managers rethinking how they get rid of old IT gear that has reached its end of life. Network World has a story about how four companies are dealing with the problem. From the story: "We sanitize the drives and when we have 10 or more units, we send them to Dell for disposal," explains [James Kritcher, vice president of IT at White Electronic Designs in Phoenix]. "We receive reports of the items recycled, which can then be reconciled to our records for an airtight audit." http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/012907-recyc ling.html"
Education

Submission + - Online BS degrees

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I'm currently attending DeVry University. I'm taking all of my classes online. DeVry is pretty expensive. I'm wondering how valuable my CIS degree from DeVry will be. Do any of you have a degree from DeVry? Is it a rip-off? I currently have a 4.0 GPA, and I feel that I'm learning a lot. I just want to know how seriously people will take the degree I'm spending $58K on.

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