Comment Re:bits or bytes (Score 5, Informative) 367
Arrggg!!! I meant: Little 'b' means 'bits'.
Comment Re:bits or bytes (Score -1, Redundant) 367
Little 'b' means bytes.
Comment Re:Sun's identity platform (Score 1) 76
My reading of the article was that they didn't feel Oracle was resourcing the projects appropriately so they took the ball to start their own game, so to speak. I take it the products in TFA are competitors to Microsoft's Active Directory and Oracle's own SSO system (but more distributed since they seem to be incorporating OAuth).
Comment Quite the bargin (Score 1) 239
Gee. I was going to buy a little single engine Cessna, but I guess I can spring for a 747 since you can pick one up for only $50,000.
Comment A don't know what a well known sequence buys you. (Score 1) 311
I depends on what you're polling. If you're polling your preferred ntp server and you typically expect it to be up, use geometric up to some maximum(e.g. 120 sec).
Comment Re:Is socket connection latency all that relevant? (Score 1) 102
OP Here. Good to know. But it seems like there's a downside to thousands of open sockets sitting around doing nothing but sending keep-alives.
Comment Is socket connection latency all that relevant? (Score 1) 102
I'm not convinced that "tricking" an HTTP connection into staying open really buys you all that much over polling your system every 5 or 10 seconds and seeing if any of your applications need updating. A previous poster mentioned using a regular socket, which seems the right way to go about it if you really do need a persistent connection. I've written applets that do this, and it's not a big deal.
Comment Flawed study is flawed (Score 4, Interesting) 280
According to TFA the study sample involved college students. What about other demographic groups? For most of the more "mature" folks I know that use Facebook it's a means of keeping in touch with distant friends, or to maintain a bit of social connection in a life dominated by work and family obligations.
Comment Re:Three words (Score 2, Insightful) 328
If you are that paranoid about keeping your job, find another job. Life is too short.
Besides, it's exactly the opposite approach to being a successful consultant. Any decent consultant provides their client with a "here's how you fire me" file with all of the information they need to access and maintain the system(s) you've built. The idea here is to do such a good job for your client that they want more, not less, of you. If you can't do this you have no business being a consultant (or general employee, for that matter).
Google Considers China's "Web Mapping License" 133
eldavojohn writes "Back in May, China rolled out new laws requiring online mapping services to be 'certified' by the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping. The laws appear to go into effect this month. Today an AFP article outlines Google's consideration of these rules and notes that it's unlikely Google will meet the qualifications to become certified as all of its servers holding the mapping data are outside of China. The AFP also reported that 'Foreign firms wanting to provide mapping and surveying services in China are required to set up joint ventures or partnerships with local firms.' Unless large changes are made, Google's services might get a lot more stunted as China regulates onward."
ICANN Likely Finally To Approve .xxx For Porn Sites
266
shmG writes with this from the International Business Times: "The company that oversees Web addresses is expected to give the go-ahead on Friday for the creation of a .xxx suffix for websites with pornographic content, company officials indicated on Thursday. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees the Internet on behalf of the US government, has in the past resisted creating a .xxx generic domain name system akin to those for .com and .net."
Comment Damage contained through one-time passwords. (Score 3, Informative) 214
FTFA: Apache said the use of one-time passwords was a "lifesaver" because it limited the damage and stopped the attack from spreading to other services/hosts.
Nice that the damage was contained. What would be the motivation(s) for hacking Apache, anyway? It's not like it's Citibank.
Comment Yes, there *is* and Emacs mode for this (Score 1) 365
I don't like Eclipse, but I don't have to since there is an emacs mode for Android development.
The 1-Second Linux Boot 156
An anonymous reader writes "Less than one second Linux boot! This video shows an OMAP3530 capturing video data from a camera and rendering it to an LCD display — the video appears on the LCD display in less than a second from reset."
Comment Use access control (Score 2, Interesting) 267
When setting up a system I always set up both a readwrite and readonly database user, granting only SELECT for the readonly user. Many web apps are "SELECT-only" that grab info out of a database and display it. By requiring these apps to use the readonly user adds another layer of protection should the web programmer code unsafely. Note that a hacker can still get info out of the database using injection, but can't put stuff in, or delete your data.
