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Submission + - Blogger shows that cosmic rays are a real problem

Submitted by Hanji
Hanji writes: We have discussed the potential effects of and protections against cosmic ray radiation here before, but for the average computer user, it's an obscure threat that doesn't affect them in any real way. Well here's a blog post that describes a strange segfault and, after extensive debugging, traces it down to a single bit flip, probably caused by a stray a cosmic ray. Lots of helpful descriptions of Linux debugging techniques in this one, and a pretty clear demonstration that this can be a real problem. I know I'm never buying a desktop without ECC RAM ever again!

Submission + - Getting bitten by constant factors in MySQL (ksplice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Think you're pretty good around a database? I thought I knew plenty about indices and the sweet performance of binary search, but it turns out that when it comes to MySQL, things aren't quite as simple as that! No matter how many fancy indices you have, if you load your data into MySQL in the wrong order (at least if you're using InnoDB), constant factors will totally bite you — as I unfortunately learned this week.

Submission + - Diskless Booting Making a Comeback? (ksplice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ever wonder what happened to PXE? Intel's popular standard for diskless booting hasn't been updated since 1999, and has missed out on such revolutions as wireless Ethernet, cloud computing and iSCSI. An open-source project called Etherboot has been trying to drag PXE into the 21st century. One of their programmers explains how to set up diskless booting for your cloud, using copy-on-write to save space.

Submission + - International Longest Tweet Contest seeks entries (ksplice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The 1st International Longest Tweet Contest is open for submissions until April 12. It looks to be a take-off of the famous Obfuscated C Contest. So far the record is 4.2 kilobits encoded per tweet, based on exploiting the fact that Twitter actually passes the full 31 bits of ISO 10646 (the international standard that Unicode is based on), not the roughly 20.08 bits/character of Unicode itself.
Google

Submission + - Google's China Challenge (ip-192.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google seems to be on the frontline in China. After drawing much anticipated critic from the communist government for stopping to censor search results, businesses start to part with the search engine giant. China Unicom, the second largest mobile carrier in China, stopped using Google search on phones that run Google’s mobile Android operating system. An announcement from Motorola followed saying that it has dropped the Internet companies search engine from one of its Android smart phones in China.

Google meanwhile hardened its stance on liberty and uncensored content. “Over time, we will not be syndicating censored search to partners in China. But we will of course fulfill our existing contractual obligations,” a Google spokeswoman in Singapore told Reuters.

Goggle started to shut down censored search content run trough Google China on March 22. Instead, the company redirected users to its unfiltered feed in Hong Kong. Chinese reaction has been swift: Authorities are already filtering “sensitive” results from Google’s Hong Kong search engine for mainland users.
Programming

Simpler "Hello World" Demonstrated In C 582

Posted by kdawson from the non-obfuscated dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Wondering where all that bloat comes from, causing even the classic 'Hello world' to weigh in at 11 KB? An MIT programmer decided to make a Linux C program so simple, she could explain every byte of the assembly. She found that gcc was including libc even when you don't ask for it. The blog shows how to compile a much simpler 'Hello world,' using no libraries at all. This takes me back to the days of programming bare-metal on DOS!"
Programming

Submission + - Simpler "Hello World" demonstrated in C (ksplice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Wondering where all that bloat comes from so even the classic "Hello world" now takes 11k? An MIT programmer decided to make a Linux C program so simple, she could explain every byte of the assembly. She found gcc was including libc even when you don't ask for it, and shows how to compile a much simpler "Hello world" — using no libraries at all. This takes me back to the days of programming bare-metal on DOS!
Education

Submission + - Are users right in rejecting security advice? (com.com)

Submitted by WeeBit
WeeBit writes: Researchers have different ideas as to why people fail to use security measures. Some feel that regardless of what happens, users will only do the minimum required. Others believe security tasks are rejected because users consider them to be a pain. A third group maintains user education is not working. Herley offers a different viewpoint. He contends that user rejection of security advice is based entirely on the economics of the process.
Games

Submission + - Previews of Civilization V (ign.com)

Submitted by c0mpliant
c0mpliant writes: IGN and Gamespot have released a preview of the recently announced and eagerly awaited Civilization V. Apart from the obvious new hexagon shape of tiles and improved graphics, the article goes on to outline some of the major changes in the game, such as updated AI, new "flavors" to world leaders and a potentially game changing, one unit per tile system. No more will the stack of doom come to your cities doorsteps.

Some features which will not be making a returning will be religion and espionage. The removal of these two have sparked a frenzy of discussion on fan related forums.
Linux

Submission + - "Mythical Man-Month" supposedly busted by MIT firm (ksplice.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We all know about the Mythical Man-Month, the argument that adding more programmers to a software project just makes it later and later. A Linux startup out of MIT claims to have busted the myth of the myth, using an MIT holiday month to hire 20 college student interns to get all their work done in a month and quadrupling its productivity. This picture shows the interns jammed in like sardines to a tiny room. We've written about them previously, but is this really who you want working on your kernel?

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