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Comment Re:Mutually exclusive (Score 5, Informative) 268

by Fez (#30772622) Attached to: Powerful Linux ISP Router Distribution?

You can have low-cost commercial grade services run using off-the-shelf hardware.

pfSense includes support for CARP, which lets you build high-availablity failover clusters. You can have two (or three or four...) cheap systems and if one dies, just fix/replace it as needed. The backup system(s) automatically take over and nobody would likely even notice the changeover.

When it's cheap, that is much easier to consider.

If you want no moving parts, you can use an ALIX box, Soekris, or perhaps even some atom-based boards. If you want to use server-grade boxes to make yourself feel warm and fuzzy, you can do that too. Supermicro even has a server-class atom board in a 1U rack which runs pfSense very well for us.
Communications

Powerful Linux ISP Router Distribution? 268

Posted by timothy from the love-doesn't-scale dept.
fibrewire writes "I'm building a Wireless ISP using commercial grade, low cost equipment. My main stumbling block is that I cannot find a decent open source ISP class routing distribution. Closest thing to even a decent tool is Ubiquiti's AIRControl — but even it doesn't play well with other network monitoring software. I've used Mikrotik's RouterOS for five years, but it just isn't built for what I need. I don't mind paying licensing fees, but $300K for a Cisco Universal Broadband Router is out of my budget. Has anyone seen any good open-source/cheap hardware/software systems that will scale to several thousand users?"
Television

Hot Or Not — 3D TV 419

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the sounds-like-a-play-for-my-wallet dept.
Several sources have written to tell us that in terms of hype at this year's CES show, there is none bigger than that surrounding 3D TV. Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, LG, and Toshiba all have their own flavors of hardware and ESPN announced a 3D sports channel, but Microsoft seems to be bucking the trend with their apparent lack of 3D interest surrounding the Xbox product. "We're yet to see any major brand at CES pushing a 3D TV that doesn't require them. In most cases these aren't the basic Ray Ban style you might have worn to watch Avatar. In many cases they'll actually require power. For example, Sony's 3D TVs use a 'frame sequential' display method, which involves active-shutter glasses that turn on and off in sync with the images. Some TVs come with the glasses and have the transmitter built in, but again, in some cases you'll need to buy the transmitter and glasses separately."
Power

Midwest Seeing Red Over 'Green' Traffic Lights 839

Posted by CmdrTaco from the do-you-see-what-i-see dept.
theodp writes "Many municipalities have switched to LED traffic signals because they burn brighter, last longer and use 90% less energy than incandescent bulbs. But they also emit less heat, meaning they sometimes have trouble melting snow, causing problems across the Midwest. In Wisconsin, snow blanketed LED traffic lights in some towns, leading to crashes at intersections where drivers weren't sure whether to stop or go. The unintended consequences of the green technology were also identified as a 'contributing factor' in the death of an Illinois woman hit by a driver who blamed the snow-covered energy-efficient signal for giving the appearance of a normal green light instead of a left-turn signal. 'We can remove the snow with heat, but the cost of doing that in terms of energy use has not brought any enthusiasm from cities and states that buy these signals,' said the CEO of an LED traffic-signal manufacturer. 'They'd like to be able to take away this issue, but they don't want to spend the money and lose the savings.' In the meantime, some towns are addressing sporadic problems by dispatching crews to remove snow or ice from signals using poles, brooms, and heating devices." We were discussing these recently at the office — several folks in the building are red/green color blind and different street lights are differently distinguishable.
Programming

Racist Facial Recognition Software Screenshot-sm 49

Posted by samzenpus from the ebony-and-irony dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A black man found that his HP facial-tracking recognition software wouldn't work. Then he discovered it worked fine for a white co-worker. From the article: 'HP's Tony Welch thanked Desi and Wanda, the video's creators, and promised that he and the team at HP were looking into why the camera was behaving the way it was. "The technology we use is built on standard algorithms that measure the difference in intensity of contrast between the eyes and the upper cheek and nose," he said. "We believe that the camera might have difficulty 'seeing' contrast in conditions where there is insufficient foreground lighting."'"
Cellphones

Verizon Removes Search Choices For BlackBerrys 510

Posted by kdawson from the you've-been-bung dept.
shrugger writes "I picked up my BlackBerry this morning to do a search and noticed Bing as my default search engine. I thought this was very strange, since I didn't pick this setting. I went to change it back to Google and, to my chagrin, Bing was my only option! Apparently Verizon has pushed an update that removes all search providers except Bing. Thanks a lot Verizon!" The Reg notes: "The move is part of the five-year search and advertising deal Verizon signed with Microsoft in January for a rumored $500m."
Math

Insurgent Attacks Follow Mathematical Pattern 181

Posted by Soulskill from the news-from-terminus dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Nature reports that data collected on the timing of attacks and number of casualties from more than 54,000 events across nine insurgent wars, including those fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2008 and in Sierra Leone between 1994 and 2003, suggest that insurgencies have a common underlying pattern that may allow the timing of attacks and the number of casualties to be predicted. By plotting the distribution of the frequency and size of events, the team found that insurgent wars follow an approximate power law, in which the frequency of attacks decreases with increasing attack size to the power of 2.5. This means that for any insurgent war, an attack with 10 casualties is 316 times more likely to occur than one with 100 casualties (316 is 10 to the power of 2.5). 'We found that the way in which humans do insurgent wars — that is, the number of casualties and the timing of events — is universal,' says team leader Neil Johnson, a physicist at the University of Miami in Florida. 'This changes the way we think insurgency works.' To explain what was driving this common pattern, the researchers created a mathematical model which assumes that insurgent groups form and fragment when they sense danger, and strike in well-timed bursts to maximize their media exposure. Johnson is now working to predict how the insurgency in Afghanistan might respond to the influx of foreign troops recently announced by US President Barack Obama. 'We do observe a complicated pattern that has to do with the way humans do violence in some collective way,' adds Johnson."
Earth

Mediterranean Might Have Filled In Months 224

Posted by kdawson from the white-water-to-die-for dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A new model suggests that the Mediterranean Sea was filled in a gigantic flood some 5.3 million years ago. According to Daniel Garcia-Castellanos' paper in Nature, the sill at the Straight of Gibraltar gave way rather suddenly, with 40 cm of rock eroding and the water level rising by 10 m per day at its peak. They imagine a shallow, fast-moving stream of water (around 100 km/hr) several kilometers wide pouring into the basin with a flow greater than a thousand Amazon rivers — that's about 100,000,000 cubic meters per second." The flood would have dropped worldwide sea levels by 9.5 meters, probably triggering climate changes. In this model the Mediterranean filled in anywhere from a few months to two years at the outside.
Science

Science Gifts For Kids? 368

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the explosives-always-go-over-well dept.
beernutmark writes "I have two science-loving kids ages 7 and 9. My youngest knew Neil deGrasse Tyson's name at age 4. With the holidays coming up, I am looking to get them some quality science-related tools. Two items on the list are a quality microscope and/or a real rock-hounding kit. I am looking for any other gift suggestions for this year or future years (or even for younger kids for other readers) and hints on good sources."

Comment Re:Tabs (Score 4, Informative) 272

by Fez (#30373076) Attached to: Mozilla Thunderbird 3 Released

A similar but not quite the same choice is available.

When viewing a message, click "other actions" then "show in conversation"

Your replies are threaded in when viewing a message this way, but it opens in a new tab.

Comment Re:Just FYI (Score 1) 227

by Fez (#30292090) Attached to: Typewriters, Computers, and Creating?

And if you've read "In the beginning was the command line", he comments about how he has changed computers quite a bit, DOS/Windows, Mac, Linux, and so on. I wonder if even he knows which computers his various works were written upon.

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