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NASA

Submission + - NASA to announce Astrobiological Discovery Dec 2nd (nasa.gov)

Submitted by
bmullan
bmullan writes: "NASA Sets News Conference on Astrobiology Discovery; Science Journal Has Embargoed Details Until 2 p.m. EST On Dec. 2

WASHINGTON — 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. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe."
Open Source

Desktop Linux Is Dead 1348

Posted by CmdrTaco from the oh-no-he-didn't dept.
digitaldc writes with this quote from PCWorld: "It kills me to say this: The dream of Linux as a major desktop OS is now pretty much dead. Despite phenomenal security and stability — and amazing strides in usability, performance, and compatibility — Linux simply isn't catching on with desktop users. And if there ever was a chance for desktop Linux to succeed, that ship has long since sunk. ... Ultimately, Linux is doomed on the desktop because of a critical lack of content. And that lack of content owes its existence to two key factors: the fragmentation of the Linux platform, and the fierce ideology of the open-source community at large."
Piracy

US Copyright Group — Lawsuits, DDoS, and Bomb Threats 365

Posted by Soulskill from the fighting-fire-with-bombs dept.
Andorin writes "The US law firm of Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver, otherwise known as the US Copyright Group, filed suit at the end of August against another 2,177 individuals for allegedly downloading and sharing the slasher film Cornered! (In total the USCG has now filed suit against over 16,200 individuals.) In retaliation, Operation Payback, the Anonymous-led project responsible for DDoSing websites of the RIAA and MPAA, targeted the US Copyright Group's website with a DDoS, temporarily bringing it down for a few hours. The group behind the attacks say they'll continue 'until they stop being angry.' Additionally, the local police department evacuated the office of Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver after a bomb threat was emailed to the firm. The building was searched, but no bomb was found."
IT

Do You Hate Being Called an "IT Guy?" 736

Posted by kdawson from the tech-genius-will-do-nicely dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The phrase 'IT' is so overused, I'm not sure what it means any more. OK, maybe it's an ego thing, but I spent a lot of years in grad school, lots of years getting good at creating software, and lots of years getting good at creating technical products and I don't want the same label as the intern who fixes windoze. I'm looking at a tech management job at a content company that is trying to become a software company, and they refer to everything about software development, data center operations, and desktop support as 'IT.' I'd like to tell the CEO before I take the job that we have to stop referring to all these people as 'IT people' or I'm not going to be able to attract and retain the top-tier talent that is required. Am I just being petty? Should I just forget it? Change it slowly over time? These folks are really developing products, but we don't normally call software creators 'product developers.' Just call them the 'Tech Department' or the 'Engineering Deptartment?'"

Comment Power and wireless (Score 1) 1095

by hendersj (#30227272) Attached to: Geek Travel To London From the US — Tips?

I've preferred the multi-country plugs myself; they're a bit more expensive, but I haven't had a problem with them falling apart, either. Got one I've had for years that I still use.

If the power brick for your laptop can handle the voltage and frequency (and most can, but check the label), you won't need a new power brick.

There's no such thing as region coding for wireless networks - the Thinkpad that I had on my first trip to the UK and the Dell I had for my second both worked without any changes other than setting the SSID - just like you would on any wireless network anywhere in the world. The only thing you might have to use region coding for is watching DVDs on your laptop that you purchase overseas - there are plenty of OSS solutions that don't require you to change the region coding on the laptop drive, either, though.
Books

Google Accused of Violating Copyright In China 247

Posted by timothy from the capitalist-running-dogs dept.
angry tapir writes "The Chinese Authors Society has demanded that Google present a resolution plan by the end of the year and quickly handle compensation for Chinese authors whose books the US company has scanned without permission as part of its Book Search program. A local copyright protection group, co-founded by the authors group, has said it found at least 17,000 Chinese works included in Google's scanning plan."
Security

Schneier On Un-Authentication 336

Posted by CmdrTaco from the gimme-back-my-keys dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "Bruce Schenier writes on Threatpost.com: 'In computer security, a lot of effort is spent on the authentication problem. Whether it is passwords, secure tokens, secret questions, image mnemonics, or something else, engineers are continually coming up with more complicated — and hopefully more secure — ways for you to prove you are who you say you are over the Internet. This is important stuff, as anyone with an online bank account or remote corporate network knows. But a lot less thought and work have gone into the other end of the problem: how do you tell the system on the other end of the line that you are no longer there? How do you un-authenticate yourself? My home computer requires me to log out or turn my computer off when I want to un-authenticate. This works for me because I know enough to do it, but lots of people just leave their computer on and running when they walk away. As a result, many office computers are left logged in when people go to lunch, or when they go home for the night. This, obviously, is a security vulnerability.'"
Mars

Submission + - Why is Mars Red? New Study Offers Surprises (spacefellowship.com) 4

Submitted by
Matt_dk
Matt_dk writes: "Is Mars red due to rocks being rusted by the water that once flooded the red planet? And is the only explanation for the hematite found by Mars orbiters and studied by the Mars Exploration rovers is that water once was present in volumes on Mars? Not necessarily, says a new study. Research done by Dr. Jonathan Merrison at the Aarhus Mars Simulation Laboratory in Denmark shows that the red dust that covers Mars may be formed by ongoing grinding of surface rocks. Liquid water need not have played any significant role in the red dust formation process."

Comment Not my experience (Score 1) 907

by hendersj (#29192981) Attached to: Why Is Linux Notebook Battery Life Still Poor?

I've used Linux for years on a variety of laptops, and generally with recent releases (over the past 5-6 years) I have managed to get very good battery life out of Linux.

Enabling frequency scaling helps, and making sure you don't have processes sucking the processor (and thus forcing the processor to high-performance mode) will certainly help. Dimming the display also helps - most modern distributions should do this automatically.

I've got 3 different Dell laptops here that get 2-3 hours off a battery running openSUSE 11.0/11.1. I have a Thinkpad t42p with an extended life battery that I used to use constantly and I'd get 3-3.5 hours out of that.

If you're only getting 45 minutes out of a battery on Linux, either something's not been configured correctly in your distribution or you've got something driving processor utilization up.
Power

Why Is Linux Notebook Battery Life Still Poor? 907

Posted by timothy from the have-seen-the-same dept.
Ganty writes "I recently purchased a Lenovo W500 notebook, and after 'downgrading' to XP and creating a dual partition, I found that I had a battery life of nearly three hours using the long-life battery, at this point I was a happy camper because it means that I can watch a DVD during a flight. I then tried various Linux distributions and found the battery life under FOS to be very disappointing, with an average of 45 minutes before a warning message. After settling on Ubuntu I then spent three days trying various hardware tweaks but I only managed to increase the battery life to one and a half hours. Unwanted services have been disabled, laptop mode has been enabled, the dual core CPU reduces speed when idle and the hard drive spins down when not needed. Obviously Apple with their X86 hardware and BSD based OS have got it right because the MacBooks last for hours, and a stock install of MS Windows XP gives me three hours of life. Why is battery life on notebooks so poor when using Linux? Some have suggested disabling various hardware items such as bluetooth and running the screen at half brightness but XP doesn't require me to do this and still gives a reasonable battery life."

Comment About trust and IT administrators (Score 3, Insightful) 730

by hendersj (#29059197) Attached to: Why Should I Trust My Network Administrator?

I worked in IT for about 15 years, and always held that if a company doesn't trust its network administrators for a justifiable reason, then those people shouldn't be the network admins.

Remote/local doesn't matter. If they are not trustworthy and you can document why, then don't make them your admins. If they are, then don't worry about it until they do something to violate that trust. And if they do violate that trust, then go after them guns a-blazing (figuratively, not literally, OBVIOUSLY).

Most network admins want to be trusted - and need to be. Being untrustworthy is the kiss of death in that entire career path.

As others have said, local or remote doesn't matter. In-house or outsourced doesn't really matter. You need to accurately assess their trustworthiness and then deal with it in an appropriate manner.

Comment Bad premise (Score 2, Funny) 228

by hendersj (#28331811) Attached to: Better Tools For Disabled Geeks?

> Follow the link for more background on this reader's query.

Apparently I have a disability that prevents me from seeing the link referred to in the story.

> Given that some form of disability is almost inevitable

Somehow we got from 60,000-100,000 people injured either temporarily or permanently every year to "we're all going to be disabled". I don't see anything that makes this conclusion logical at all. It's almost as if the writer hasn't really done any research, and OH MY GOD MY HAND!!!!! AGHH!!!!

Comment Wow.... (Score 1) 217

by hendersj (#27276013) Attached to: Fermilab Discovers Untheorized Particle

'We congratulate CDF on the first evidence for a new unexpected Y state that decays to J/psi and phi,' said Japanese physicist Masanori Yamauchi, a KEK spokesperson. 'This state may be related to the Y(3940) state discovered by Belle and might be another example of an exotic hadron containing charm quarks. We will try to confirm this state in our own Belle data.'

Holy shit, all those words registered as English but I understood absolutely nothing in the article.

No, correction, "We congratulate" does track.
Image

South Carolina Seeking To Outlaw Profanity Screenshot-sm 849

Posted by samzenpus from the f@#k-those-f@#king-f@#kers dept.
MBGMorden writes "It looks like in an act that defies common sense, a bill has been introduced in the South Carolina State Senate that seeks to outlaw the use of profanity. According to the bill it would become a felony (punishable by a fine up to $5000 or up to 5 years in prison) to 'publish orally or in writing, exhibit, or otherwise make available material containing words, language, or actions of a profane, vulgar, lewd, lascivious, or indecent nature.' I'm not sure if 'in writing' could be applied to the internet, but in any event this is scary stuff."

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