FlaSheridn - Slashdot User

Oracle Releases MySQL 5.5 263

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday December 15, 2010 @09:37PM from the new-and-improved dept.

darthcamaro writes "Two years after Sun released MySQL 5.1, Oracle has picked up the ball with the official release of MySQL 5.5. New features include semi-synchronous replication, InnoDB by default and new SIGNAL/RESIGNAL support for exception handling. Above all, Oracle stressed that they are committed to further MySQL open source development and that they see it as a complementary technology to their proprietary Oracle database."

America's Cubicles Are Shrinking 484

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday December 15, 2010 @10:40AM from the everyone-moo-together dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "In the 1970s, American corporations typically thought they needed 500 to 700 square feet per employee to build an effective office, but the LA Times reports that today's average is a little more than 200 square feet per person, and the space allocation could hit a mere 50 square feet by 2015. 'We're at a very interesting inflection point in real estate history,' says Peter Miscovich, who studies workplace trends. 'The next 10 years will be very different than the last 30.' Although cubicles have shrunk from an average of 64 feet to 49 feet in recent years, companies are looking for more ways to compress their real estate footprint with offices that squeeze together workstations while setting aside a few rooms where employees can conduct meetings or have private phone conversations. 'Younger workers' lives are all integrated, not segregated,' says Larry Rivard. 'They have learned to work anywhere — at a kitchen table or wherever.'"

Yahoo Lays Off 600; Free Beers and Jobs Flow 164

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday December 15, 2010 @09:12AM from the yodeling-all-the-way-to-the-bank dept.

CWmike writes "Yahoo confirmed on Tuesday that it has laid off 600 people, following news reports often based on Twitter messages from employees who had been let go. The layoffs amount to about 4 percent of the company's global workforce, Yahoo said. The company said affected workers are receiving severance packages and outplacement services. Laid-off workers may find some comfort on Twitter, where they are receiving an outpouring of goodwill. One San Francisco brewery is offering a free beer to people from Yahoo who show their termination letters. People with companies including Aprendi Learning, Tucows.com, DirecTV, Combine Couture, OMGPOP.com, and Uptake.com all posted Twitter messages expressing interest in hiring former Yahoo employees. The site Quora is hosting a thread for companies in the San Francisco area interested in hiring laid-off Yahoo workers. So far, there are 14 posts about jobs with companies including Yammer, Mozilla, and Cloudera."

Air Force Blocks NY Times, WaPo, Other Media 372

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 14, 2010 @10:42PM from the horses-and-barns dept.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Air Force, not content with blocking WikiLeaks and its mirrors, has begun blocking media sites carrying WL documents. "Air Force users who try to view the websites of the New York Times, Britain's Guardian, Spain's El Pais, France's Le Monde or German magazine Der Spiegel instead get a page that says, 'ACCESS DENIED. Internet Usage is Logged & Monitored'... The Air Force says it has blocked more than 25 websites that contain WikiLeaks documents, in order to keep classified material off unclassified computer systems. ... The move was ordered by the 24th Air Force... The Army, Navy, and Marines aren't blocking the sites, and the Defense Department hasn't told the services to do so, according to spokespeople for the services and the Pentagon."

Hand-Off, Reconnect To Verizon LTE Can Take 2 Minutes 53

Posted by Soulskill on Monday December 13, 2010 @10:58PM from the did-you-try-blowing-in-it dept.

CWmike writes "Verizon Wireless admits that laptop users with USB modems on its new high-speed LTE network may experience up to a two minute delay when switching over from a 3G coverage zone. 'Hand-offs can take up to a couple minutes, but that was expected and a fix is in the works,' Verizon spokesman Jeffrey Nelson told Computerworld. Also, to get back on LTE once already having been in an LTE zone, one tester said it was necessary to unplug the modem and plug it back in again. Nelson said that was not necessary, although he did say it could take up to two minutes to reconnect to LTE. Nelson said Verizon was working with a modem maker on the hand-off problem, but didn't say which maker. Business Insider said the hand-off problem occurred with an LG model. 'We're working with the modem maker for quick update, but no ETA yet.' Nelson said. A Mac OS version was also said to be close."

Two Major Ad Networks Found Serving Malware 330

Posted by samzenpus on Monday December 13, 2010 @01:06AM from the wanna-buy-a-virus? dept.

Trailrunner7 writes "Two major online ad networks — DoubleClick and MSN — were serving malware via drive-by download exploits over the last week, experts say, after a group of attackers was able to trick the networks into displaying their ads by impersonating an online advertising provider. The scheme involved a group of attackers who registered a domain that was one letter away from that of ADShuffle.com, an online advertising technology firm. The attackers then used the fake domain — ADShufffle.com — to dupe the advertising networks into serving their malicious banner ads. The ads used various exploits to install malware on victims' PCs through drive-by downloads, according to information compiled by security vendor Armorize."

DNSSEC Comes To .Net Zone Today 62

Posted by kdawson on Friday December 10, 2010 @10:37AM from the if-it-were-easy-we'd-be-done-already dept.

wiredmikey sends news that as of today VeriSign has enabled DNSSEC on the .net zone. This is one milestone in a years-long process of securing the DNS against cache poisoning and other attacks. Next step will be for VeriSign to sign the .com root early next year."Having DNSSEC enabled for .net domains... [is] important as it represents one of the most critical implementations of DNSSEC technology, since .net serves as the underpinning for many critical Internet functions. The largest zone to be DNSSEC enabled to date, .net currently has more than 13 million... domain name registrations worldwide."

SpaceX's Dragon Module Successfully Re-Enters 156

Posted by timothy on Friday December 10, 2010 @09:03AM from the go-go-spacex-crew dept.

Zitchas writes "Following the news of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket with a Dragon module on-board, and its arrival on orbit, we now have the news that is has successfully re-entered the atmosphere and splashed down in the Pacific. As their website proudly claims, this is the first time a private corporation has recovered a spacecraft they orbited, joining the ranks of a few space nations and the EU space agency. A great step forward for space travel. Hopefully everything continues to go well for them."

Google Wants To Take Away Your Capslock Key 968

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday December 08, 2010 @10:17AM from the they-can-have-it dept.

heptapod writes "Slashdot reported earlier about Google's Chrome notebook and keen-eyed readers would have noticed the lack of a caps lock key. 'According to Google, this will improve the quality of the comments, because people will not be able to write all in capital letters. I'm not a fan of the caps lock key myself. I never use it, so it can go to hell, for all I'm concerned. But taking away choice from people is not good, especially when this is not going to improve the quality of comments.'"

NASA's 'Arsenic Microbe' Science Under Fire 152

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday December 08, 2010 @09:48AM from the arsenic-is-yummy dept.

radioweather writes "The cryptic press release NASA made last week that set the blogosphere afire with conjecture, which announced: 'NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.' may be a case of 'go fever' science pushed too quickly by press release. A scathing article in Slate.com lists some very prominent microbiologists who say the NASA-backed study is seriously flawed and that the finding may be based on something as simple as poor sample washing to remove phosphate contamination. One of the scientists, Shelley Copley of the University of Colorado said 'This paper should not have been published,' while another, John Roth of UC-Davis says: 'I suspect that NASA may be so desperate for a positive story that they didn't look for any serious advice from DNA or even microbiology people,' The experience reminded some of another press conference NASA held in 1996. Scientists unveiled a meteorite from Mars in which they said there were microscopic fossils. A number of critics condemned the report (also published in Science) for making claims it couldn't back up."

W3C Says Don't Use HTML5 Yet 205

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday October 06, 2010 @11:39AM from the stop-dragging-yer-feet dept.

GMGruman writes "InfoWorld's Paul Krill reports that the W3C, the standards body behind the Web standards, is urging Web developers not to use the draft HTML5 standards on their websites. This flies in the face of HTML5 support and encouragement, especially for mobile devices, by Apple, Google, Microsoft, and others. The W3C says developers should avoid the draft HTML5 spec (the final version is not due for several years) because of interoperability issues across browsers."

Rustock Botnet Responsible For 40% of Spam 250

Posted by timothy on Tuesday August 24, 2010 @10:49PM from the long-walk-short-plank dept.

angry tapir writes "More than 40 percent of the world's spam is coming from a single network of computers that computer security experts continue to battle, according to new statistics from Symantec's MessageLabs' division. The Rustock botnet has shrunk since April, when about 2.5 million computers were infected with its malicious software that sent about 43 billion spam e-mails per day. Much of it is pharmaceutical spam."

Windows DLL Vulnerability Exploit In the Wild 178

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday August 24, 2010 @08:12AM from the is-it-tuesday-again-already dept.

WrongSizeGlass writes "Exploit code for the DLL loading issue that reportedly affects hundreds of Windows applications made its appearance on Monday. HD Moore, the creator of the Metasploit open-source hacking toolkit, released the exploit code along with an auditing tool that records which applications are vulnerable. 'Once it makes it into Metasploit, it doesn't take much more to execute an attack,' said Andrew Storms, director of security operations for nCircle Security. 'The hard part has already been done for [hackers].'"

'Leap Seconds' May Be Eliminated From UTC 470

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday August 24, 2010 @02:01AM from the time-and-time-again dept.

angry tapir writes "Sparking a fresh round of debate over an ongoing issue in time-keeping circles, the International Telecommunications Union is considering eliminating leap seconds from the time scale used by most computer systems, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Since their introduction in 1971, leap seconds have proved problematic for at least a few software programs. The leap second added on to the end of 2008, for instance, caused Oracle cluster software to reboot unexpectedly in some cases."

SpaceX Unveils Heavy-Lift Rocket Designs 248

Posted by timothy on Thursday August 05, 2010 @05:54PM from the now-comes-the-wedding-night dept.

FleaPlus writes "At the recent Joint Propulsion Conference, SpaceX's rocket development facility director Tom Markusic unveiled conceptual plans for how its current Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 commercial rockets can be evolved into heavy-lift rockets, ranging from a Falcon X capable of lifting 38,000kg to orbit, up to a 140,000kg Falcon XX (more than either the Saturn V or the 75,000kg shuttle-derived rocket Congress currently plans on having NASA spend >$13B building). SpaceX presentations also discuss a new Merlin 2 heavy-lift engine, solar-electric cargo tugs, adapting their current engines for descent/ascent vehicles fueled by Mars-derived methane, and a desire for the government to take the lead on in-space nuclear thermal propulsion while commercial focuses on launchers. In a recent interview, SpaceX CEO/CTO Elon Musk expressed his goal of lowering the price of Mars transportation enough to enable early colonization in 20 years, and his own plans for retiring to Mars."

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