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Comment Here is me (Score 2, Interesting) 3709

by Anonymous Crowhead (#25645681) Attached to: Barack Obama Wins US Presidency

The last eight years have been the most prosperous of my life. My parents kicked me to the curb when I was 18. I made my way through life by working hard and getting educated. Now I own a house in one of the most expensive cities in the US. I have 10 years of living expenses in the bank. Other than a $180K mortgage, I have no debt. No one handed it to me. I earned it.

Should things get worse for me in the future, I will not blame Obama. I never attributed my success to Bush, I never blamed Clinton when my net worth tanked with the dot com bubble. My house is my house. It was worth $600K two years ago, now maybe $450. So what? I don't have an ARM. It doesn't take too many IQ points to understand that when interest rates wwere at historic lows trying to shave 1 or 2% off your rate at the risk of higher rates in the future was a fool's errand. I have been poor. But I never had a credit card balance or any other debt I couldn't pay. Why? Because I will go without before running up debt.

If you blame the politicians for your lot in life, maybe you should reexamine. Your life is what you make of it. In the end, the leadership of this country has very little to do with it.

Take a break from your hand wringing about how you are being oppressed by the RIAA or patents and examine your life. It's not all about free music, movies and linux. It's about what you do personally to make your life better. Don't blame the government if your life sucks. The blame lies with you.
Programming

Reuse Code Or Code It Yourself? 429

Posted by kdawson from the good-or-great dept.
eldavojohn writes "I began coding for a project that had simple requirements for my employer — Web services and a test application for them. But requirements have been creeping, as they always do. Initially I had decided to use the Spring Framework with Hibernate. And I re-used a lot of libraries that made things simple and quick for me. The new requests coming in involve capabilities beyond those of the frameworks. Now, I used to be told that good programmers write code and great programmers reuse code. It's starting to look like I would have saved myself a whole lot of time if I had written the database transaction using JDBC instead of Hibernate — now that I'm married to this object model framework, some of this stuff doesn't look doable. So what is better for the majority of software projects out there: reuse code, or code from scratch? What elements or characteristics of a problem point to one option over the other?"
Programming

Practical Reasons To Choose Git Or Subversion? 667

Posted by kdawson from the while-we're-at-it-do-you-like-vi-or-emacs dept.
markmcb writes "I develop Rails applications and recently followed my lemming herd and made the switch to Git after learning some of the practical advantages Git offers over Subversion. As I'm sure there are many die-hard Subversion fans in the Slashdot audience, I'm curious what your key reasons are for sticking with Subversion. If possible, I'd like reasons that apply to 'most of the time' as opposed to arguments based on obscure features that may get used only a few times ever."
Mandriva

Mandriva Linux 2009 Released 106

Posted by timothy from the still-crazy-after-all-these-years dept.
Adam Williamson writes "Mandriva has today released Mandriva Linux 2009, the new major release of the popular distribution. 2009 is a bold release which brings the new KDE 4 as the default desktop, along with a re-designed installer and Mandriva Control Center and many other new features. Other significant updates include GNOME 2.24, OpenOffice.org 3, Mozilla Firefox 3, and kernel 2.6.27. Key features include new graphical in-line upgrade capability, netbook compatibility, class-leading hardware support, and further improved support for working with mobile devices. For more details, see the Release Tour and the Release Notes. Get it at the download page, or go straight to the torrent list."
Privacy

Give Up the Fight For Personal Privacy? 751

Posted by kdawson from the they-know-anyway dept.
KlaymenDK writes "Over the last decade or so, I have strived to maintain my privacy. I have uninstalled Windows, told my friends 'sorry' when they wanted me to join Facebook, had a fight with my brother when he wanted to move the family email hosting to Gmail, and generally held back on my personal information online. But since, amongst all of my friends, I am the only one doing this, it may well be that my battle is lost already. Worse, I'm really putting myself out of the loop, and it is starting to look like self-flagellation. Indeed, it is a common occurrence that my wife or friends will strike up a conversation based on something from their Facebook 'wall' (whatever that is). Becoming ever more unconnected with my friends, live or online, is ultimately harming my social relations. I am seriously considering throwing in the towel and signing up for Gmail, Facebook, the lot. If 'they' have my soul already, I might as well reap the benefits of this newfangled, privacy-less, AJAX-2.0 world. It doesn't really matter if it was me or my friends selling me out. Or does it? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter. How many Windows-eschewing users are not also eschewing the social networking services and all the other 2.0 supersites with their dubious end-user license agreements?"
Hardware Hacking

Overclocked Memory Breaks Core i7 CPUs 267

Posted by kdawson from the chip-has-potential dept.
arcticstoat writes "Overclockers looking to bolster their new Nehalem CPUs with overclocked memory may be disappointed. Intel is telling motherboard manufacturers not to encourage people to push the voltage of their DIMMs beyond 1.65V, as anything higher could damage the CPU. This will come as a blow to owners of enthusiast memory, such as Corsair's 2.133MHz DDR3 Dominator RAM, which needs 2V to run at its full speed with 9-9-9-24 timings."
Privacy

Anti-Terrorist Data Mining Doesn't Work Very Well 163

Posted by kdawson from the could-have-told-you-and-did dept.
Presto Vivace and others sent us this CNet report on a just-released NRC report coming to the conclusion, which will surprise no one here, that data mining doesn't work very well. It's all those darn false positives. The submitter adds, "Any chance we could go back to probable cause?" "A report scheduled to be released on Tuesday by the National Research Council, which has been years in the making, concludes that automated identification of terrorists through data mining or any other mechanism 'is neither feasible as an objective nor desirable as a goal of technology development efforts.' Inevitable false positives will result in 'ordinary, law-abiding citizens and businesses' being incorrectly flagged as suspects. The whopping 352-page report, called 'Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists,' amounts to [be] at least a partial repudiation of the Defense Department's controversial data-mining program called Total Information Awareness, which was limited by Congress in 2003."
Privacy

Open Security Foundation To Maintain DataLossDB 34

Posted by kdawson from the breaches-r-us dept.
An anonymous reader points out an announcement up at Attrition.org, that going forward their Data Loss Database will be taken over and maintained by the Open Security Foundation. From the news release: "...OSF is pleased to announce that the DataLossDB (also known as the Data Loss Database — Open Source [DLDOS] currently run by Attrition.org) will be formally maintained as an ongoing project under the OSF umbrella organization as of July 15, 2008... The project's core mission is to track the loss or theft of personally identifying information not just from the United States, but across the world. As of June 4, 2008, DataLossDB contains information on over 1,000 breaches of personal identifying information covering over 330 million records. The... DataLossDB will be free for download and use in non-profit work and research. The new website launch builds off of the current data set and provides an extensive list of new features."
Displays

High-Performance Flexible Organic Transistors 25

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the displays-that-bend-over-backwards-for-you dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "Organic — or carbon-based — transistors are not new and can be used to design flexible computer displays, RFID tags and sensors. However, these organic single crystals could not be mass-produced because they needed to be individually handpicked. But now, researchers at Stanford University and the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) have developed a new method for building flexible organic transistor arrays. Even if the researchers have reached a density of 13 million crystals per square inch (or 2 million per square centimeter), there are still several issues to solve before this method can be used for commercial applications of these fast transistors."
Science

Arctic Ice May Melt By 2040 474

Posted by kdawson from the what-about-Santa? dept.
Dekortage writes in with a new study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research suggesting that the North Pole may be clear of ice in summer as soon as 2040, decades earlier than previously thought. From the article: "'As the ice retreats, the ocean transports more heat to the Arctic and the open water absorbs more sunlight, further accelerating the rate of warming and leading to the loss of more ice,' Holland said in the statement. 'This is a positive feedback loop with dramatic implications for the entire Arctic.'"

What's With All This Spam? 212

Posted by Zonk from the pork-everywhere dept.
coondoggie writes to mention a Network World article about soaring spam levels, confirmed now by researchers, IT managers, and security vendors. So, indeed, it's not just you: October was a spammy month. From the article: "Levine's assumption is this spike in spam levels is a result of a new generation of viruses and zombies that can infect PCs more quickly and are harder to get rid of. In its October report, messaging security vendor MessageLabs says the spike is largely due to two Trojan programs, Warezov and SpamThru. Others say a new breed of spam messages called image spam -- messages with text embedded in an image file that evade spam filters, which can't recognize the words inside the image -- is responsible." A note: I have no interest in penny stocks.

Managing Money With Linux Apps 142

Posted by kdawson from the accounting-for-it dept.
lisah writes, "As part of a series of special reports this week, Linux.com is reviewing several ways to manage your money using Linux apps. First up is a review of GnuCash 2.0, a personal and small business accounting package. Though it has a bit of a learning curve, the reviewer says the application is 'stable and robust' and an upgrade from previous versions is well worth it for the program's new features and improved online banking support." Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.

Novell Gets $348 Million From Microsoft 308

Posted by kdawson from the money-is-the-root-of-all dept.
An anonymous reader writes, "Novell has published additional details about its agreements with Microsoft concerning Windows and Linux interoperability and patents. It seems the company is receiving an up-front payment of $348 million from Microsoft, for SLES subscription certificates and for patent cross-licensing. Microsoft will make an upfront payment to Novell of $240 million for SLES subscription 'certificates' that Microsoft can use, resell, or distribute over the term of the agreement. Regarding the patent cooperation agreement, Microsoft will make an up-front net payment to Novell of $108 million, and Novell will make ongoing payments totaling at least $40 million over five years to Microsoft."

A Truly Open Linux Phone 164

Posted by kdawson from the apt-get-phone-software dept.
skelator2821 writes to tell us about the debut of the OpenMoko, a Linux phone with GPS that is open from top to bottom. The device is set to debut to developers this month for $350, according to the article, but there is no detail on how to get your hands on one, and no link to the manufacturer (FIC). From the article: "This is the first phone in a long time to get us really interested in what it is, what it isn't, and the philosophy behind it. The philosophy is the thing that makes Linux great... it is really open. It runs the latest kernel, 2.6.18 as of a few weeks ago, and you can get software from a repository with apt-get."

Another Denial of Service Bug Found in Firefox 2 206

Posted by samzenpus from the be-more-secure dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A second security flaw that could cause the new Firefox 2 browser to crash has been publicly disclosed. The vulnerability lies in the way the open-source browser handles JavaScript code. Viewing a rigged Web page will cause the browser to exit, a representative for Mozilla, the publisher of the software, said Wednesday. Contrary to claims on security mailing lists, the bug cannot be exploited to run arbitrary code on a PC running Firefox 2, the representative said. This flaw in the JavaScript Range object is different than the denial-of-service vulnerability in Firefox 2 that was confirmed by Mozilla last week. That bug is related to a more serious security hole, which was fixed in earlier versions of Firefox, the organization has said. The two 'crashers' are the only publicly released vulnerabilities that have been confirmed by Mozilla in the week since Firefox 2 was launched. The issues are only minor, the organization has said."

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I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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