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Submission + - Top 10 Reasons Cloud Computing Deployments Fail (earthweb.com)

Submitted by
climenole
climenole writes: "Lack of cloud computing vendor management and poor understanding of the risks are among the challenges that doom cloud deployments.Practically every cloud computing provider – from Google to Rackspace, Amazon to Salesforce.com – has suffered through an outage at some point. When outages happen, skeptics question the viability of cloud computing."

Submission + - Slashdot is Dying, New York Times Confims It (nytimes.com) 12

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The New York Times is running a story about how Slashdot has dropped in popularity compared to other news sites in social web space. Quote: "Why is Slashdot almost irrelevant to the social media community? It used to be the biggest driver of traffic to tech web sites, but now it hardly delivers any traffic at all to them. We explore some of the reasons, including input from our own community."
Iphone

Submission + - iPhone data leads to rape charges being dropped (theage.com.au) 1

Submitted by one eyed kangaroo
one eyed kangaroo writes: The Age reports that a Sydney man has used deleted iPhone messages to have serious charges against him dropped.
"In what may be the first time an iPhone's elephantine memory has saved someone accused of a serious crime, deleted data retrieved by a leading surveillance expert appears to have led to the dropping of five rape charges against a Sydney man." His lawyer said, "'Without the ability of Coulthart to drag the content out, a man's life may have been ruined'.'

Submission + - Is Valve's Anti-Cheat software faulty? (rockpapershotgun.com)

Submitted by HaymarketRiot
HaymarketRiot writes: There have been reports that Valve's Anti-Cheat software (VAC) has recently banned a large number of Modern Warfare 2 players. A banning from VAC is especially strict in that there is no chance of appeal, as that would show a fault in supposedly perfect software. Word from the associated Steam Group indicates that the problem may be the fault of the game's developers, Infinity Ward.

Submission + - Old School Color Cycling with HTML5 (effectgames.com) 1

Submitted by jhuckaby
jhuckaby writes: Anyone remember Color Cycling from the 90s? This was a technology often used in 8-bit video games of the era, to achieve interesting visual effects by cycling (shifting) the color palette. This demo is an implementation of a full 8-bit color cycling engine, rendered into an HTML5 Canvas in real-time. It uses some breathtaking scenes by Mark Ferrari (illustrator of the original Monkey Island and Loom games), and some ambient soundtracks. Here is a blog article on my site I just posted with more details: http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/joe/Old_School_Color_Cycling_with_HTML5

Submission + - Court rules bypassing dongles not a DMCA violation (courthousenews.com) 2

Submitted by tcrown007
tcrown007 writes: MGE UPS makes UPS systems and software that are protected by hardware dongles. After the dongles expired, GE bypassed the dongles and continued to use the software. MGE sued, won, and now lost on GE's appeal. Directly from the court's ruling, "Merely bypassing a technological protection that restricts a user from viewing or using a work is insufficient to trigger the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision...The owner’s technological measure must protect the copyrighted material against an infringement of a right that the Copyright Act protects, not from mere use or viewing." Say what? I think I just saw a flying pig go by.
Censorship

Submission + - Porn sites still exposed in China (skunkpost.com)

Submitted by crimeandpunishment
crimeandpunishment writes: Could it be that Internet censorship in China has a pecking order? Politics & human rights are bad....but porn is okay? The porn sites that suddenly popped up in China two months ago are still accessible...leaving people wondering if it's a change in policy, a glitch....or maybe a test by the Internet police. The Chinese government isn't saying, but one internet analyst speculates "Maybe they are thinking that if Internet users have some porn to look at, then they won't pay so much attention to political matters."
Earth

Submission + - Is fake grass the lawn of the future? (msn.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: In a tiny but growing number of patches in suburbia, low-maintenance yard mavens are rolling out a high-tech version of the stuff that used to adorn concrete balconies — and are calling it their lawn. Don’t laugh. The makers of the grass — who go by such monikers as Perfect Turf and ForeverLawn — say artificial lawns are one of the few landscaping businesses that have turned out to be recession-proof.

the lawns require no seeding, fertilizing or trimming; homeowners do little more than hose down the grass when it’s dirty and occasionally break out a rake to fluff up any matted patches. The industry also plays up its environmental benefits, including fewer pollution-spewing mowers, a reduction in harsh chemicals such as fertilizer or insecticide and, most important, less water use. In drought-prone regions, municipalities like Los Angeles County are even providing tax rebates for residents who remove areas of natural lawn.

In some areas, the stuff is so controversial that towns have banned it and neighborhood associations have fined homeowners who refuse to remove it.

http://realestate.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=24371240
Privacy

Submission + - Beware: govts are tapping your 3G calls (zdnet.com.au)

Submitted by joshgnosis
joshgnosis writes: ZDNet Australia reports that an increasing number of governments around the world are using interceptors that can push 3G calls back down to the much less secure 2G in order to tap into the calls. "People have this misconception that if they're using a 3G phone their call cannot be intercepted because the 3G network provides them with a bit more security", says Les Goldsmith, CEO of call interceptor distributor ESD Group.
IT

Submission + - Managing the Most Remote Data Center in the World (youtube.com)

Submitted by blackbearnh
blackbearnh writes: Imagine that your data center was in the most geographically remote location in the world. Now imagine that you can only get to it 4 months of the year. Just for fun, add in some of the most extreme weather conditions in the world. That's the challenge that faces John Jacobsen, one of the people responsible for making sure that the data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory makes it all the way from the South Pole to researchers across the world. In an interview recorded at OSCON, Jacobsen talks about the problems that he has to face, which includes (surprisingly) keeping the data center cool. If you're ever gripped because you had to haul yourself across town in the middle of the night to fix a server crash, this interview should put things in perspective...
Linux

Submission + - The Scalability of Linus 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Katherine Noyes writes at LinuxInsider that it may be time for Linus Torvalds to share more of the responsibility for Linux that he's been shouldering. "If Linux wants to keep up with the competition there is much work to do, more than even a man of Linus's skill to accomplish," argues one user and the "scalability of Linus," is the subject of a post by Jonathan Corbet wondering if there might there be a Linus scalability crunch point coming. "The Linux kernel development process stands out in a number of ways; one of those is the fact that there is exactly one person who can commit code to the 'official' repository," Corbet writes. A problem with that scenario is the potential for repeats of what Corbet calls "the famous 'Linus burnout' episode of 1998" when everything stopped for a while until Linus rested a bit, came back, and started merging patches again. "If Linus is to retain his central position in Linux kernel development, the community as a whole needs to ensure that the process scales and does not overwhelm him," Corbet adds. But many don't agree. "Don't be fooled that Linus has to scale — he has to work hard, but he is the team captain and doorman. He has thousands doing most of the work for him. He just has to open the door at the appropriate moment," writes Robert Pogson adding that Linus "has had lots of practice and still has fire in his belly.""

Submission + - Are 89% of BitTorrent files illegal? (delimiter.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A university in Australia has come up with some interesting research. After looking at more than a million BitTorrent files, they've come to the conclusion that 89% percent of the files infringe copyright on one level or another. However, it looks like people are mainly downloading a small core of content — just 15,000 torrents (4 percent or so) were responsible for 90 percent of seeders. The full report is available online for downloading, and contains a lot of interesting insights about the BitTorrent universe. It looks like they mainly analysed files through the Torrentz.com meta-search engine, which can search a bunch of different BitTorrent sites.
Google

Submission + - Google's free satnav outperforms TomTom (pcpro.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: A real-world road test of several different satnav systems has found that the free Google Maps Navigation outperformed TomTom's premium GPS unit. PC Pro put the satnavs through four different real-world tests, covering country roads, inner-city traffic and motorway driving. The Google satnav finished the four tests more than half an hour ahead of the top of the range TomTom Go 950 Live. "For those in rural areas or people who spend hours in their car every day, we believe the investment in a dedicated satnav device or software will still pay off," PC Pro concludes. "But for the recreational user, it’s amazing what you can get for free."
Idle

Submission + - Apple can't stand toilet humour (watoday.com.au)

Submitted by beaver1024
beaver1024 writes: I doubt if Apple lawyers even contemplated the irony as they slapped a small Australian company producing camping equipment with a lawsuit for trademark violations. Sea to Summit makes a product that assists in the disposal of human excrement calling it iPood. Apparently Apple thinks that "For obvious reasons, Apple's reputation for clean design and high-tech electronics will suffer should it be associated with latrines and the like through Sea to Summit's use of iPood.". If only Sea to Summit had the resources to fight this in court. Alas, we are witnessing yet another sign of the corrupted nature of IP laws in Australia and internationally.

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