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Ubuntu

Submission + - Massive Ubuntu Linux desktop deployment (leidenuniv.nl) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Massive Ubuntu Linux desktop deployment at lower cost

Boot easily more than 100 workstations from one low-end server in single read-only image over network. This saves time and money. The main goals were tasked with finding new solutions that improve desktop performance for end users and decrease the amount of work per desktop for administrators. The selected solution was found in combining known technologies like networked booting, a read-only system disk image with live-cd techniques and network attached storage.

Paper A paper is written for decision makers (Chapt. 2, non-technical) and system administrators (Chapt. 3, technical), but may be interesting for a wider audience as well.
Google

Pedestrian Follows Google Map, Gets Run Over, Sues 699

Posted by Soulskill from the america-amazes-me-sometimes dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The Toronto Star reports that a Utah woman is suing Google for more than $100,000 in damages, claiming its maps function gave her walking directions that led her onto a major highway, where she was struck by a car. Lauren Rosenberg sought directions between two addresses in Utah about 3 kilometers apart and the top result suggested that she follow a busy rural highway for several hundred meters. The highway did not have sidewalks or any other pedestrian-friendly amenities, and Rosenberg was struck by a car. Rosenberg filed suit against both the driver of the car that struck her and Google, claiming both carried responsibility in her injury. Her lawyers claim Google is liable because it did not warn her that the route would not offer a safe place for a pedestrian to walk. Google has pointed out that the directions Rosenberg sought come with a warning of caution for pedestrians, but Rosenberg claims that she accessed the Maps function on her Blackberry mobile device, where it did not include the warning."
Education

Conservative Textbook Curriculum Passes Final Vote In Texas 895

Posted by Soulskill from the maximum-truthiness dept.
suraj.sun sends in a followup to a story we've been following about the Texas Board of Education's efforts to put a more political spin on some of their state's textbooks. From the Dallas Morning News: "In a landmark move that will shape the future education of millions of Texas schoolchildren, the State Board of Education on Friday approved new curriculum standards for US history and other social studies courses that reflect a more conservative tone than in the past. Split along party lines, the board delivered a pair of 9-5 votes to adopt the new standards, which will dictate what is taught in all Texas schools and provide the basis for future textbooks and student achievement tests over the next decade. Texas standards often wind up being taught in other states because national publishers typically tailor their materials to Texas, one of the biggest textbook purchasers in the country. Approval came after the GOP-dominated board approved a new curriculum standard that would encourage high school students to question the legal doctrine of church-state separation — a sore point for social conservative groups who disagree with court decisions that have affirmed the doctrine, including the ban on school-sponsored prayer."

Comment Re:Stop being a douche (Score 1) 539

by mverwijs (#30562240) Attached to: Preventing My Hosting Provider From Rooting My Server?

So you openly admit the machine IS NOT YOURS. You are essentially keeping them from their own machine, which I find unethical. I can't blame them for taking matters into their own hand and rebooting the system into single-user mode and locking you out until you play nice.

Stop being a jerk and cooperate with the owners of the machine you are renting or take your data elsewhere.

Simply because they own the property does not give them the right to invade your privacy. There is still the illusion of privacy here, right?
Operating Systems

Submission + - netboot.me: Turning 'netboot' into 'internetboot' (netboot.me)

Submitted by
Nick Johnson
Nick Johnson writes: "Netboot.me takes regular netbooting and makes it a whole lot more versatile — now, you can netboot directly into the installers for many popular linux distros, as well as system tools and even live linux distributions, all directly over the Internet, and without any local configuration required!

All that's required to set up netboot.me is a spare writable CD, USB key, or floppy disk to write a small (less than 1MB) disk image to. Alternately, determined geeks can change their DHCP server to allow computers to netboot directly. Once you've done that, booting off the device on any computer with wired ethernet (wifi is a work in progress) will automatically cause the bootloader to download the current version of the menu from netboot.me, which you can then find the boot image you want to boot from. Selecting it causes the boot image to be downloaded and booted immediately.

Best of all, netboot.me lets you add your own boot configurations; once you've tested them, and if they're of general interest, you can file a bug to have them included in the menu system. netboot.me is capable of booting any linux kernel and any other standard boot image, as well as disk images and CD images, thanks to syslinux's memdisk.

The getting started and help pages have many more details on how to use netboot.me, and how to contribute to it. The more boot images in the system the better, so contributions are much appreciated."
The Internet

Opera 10.0 Released, With Integrated Web Server Functionality 437

Posted by timothy from the two-way-street dept.
sherl0k writes "Opera 10.0, dubbed Opera Unite, has been released. Built into the Web browser is a full-fledged Web server, complete with nifty little gadgets such as a 'fridge' that people can post notes onto, a chat room, a widget to stream your music library anywhere, and a built-in file-sharing mechanism. It also scores 100/100 on the Acid3 test." Readers fudreporter and TLS point to The Register's report on the new release and a 5-minute video demo, respectively. Update: 06/16 15:18 GMT by T: Roar Lauritzsen of Opera Software writes to point out that "release" isn't quite the right word here; though you can download it, version 10.0 is still in beta, and the version with Unite is a labs (experimental) release.
Microsoft

Microsoft Releases Super-Secure XP to US Air Force 507

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the true-security-through-obscurity dept.
Wired is reporting that Microsoft is releasing the most secure version of Windows XP ever created, but only if you are the US Air Force. "The Air Force persuaded Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to provide it with a secure Windows configuration that saved the service about $100 million in contract costs and countless hours of maintenance. At a congressional hearing this week on cybersecurity, Alan Paller, research director of the Sans Institute, shared the story as an template for how the government could use its massive purchasing power to get companies to produce more secure products. And those could eventually be available to the rest of us. Security experts have been arguing for this "trickle-down" model for years. But rather than wield its buying power for the greater good, the government has long wimped out and taken whatever vendors served them. If the Air Force case is a good judge, however, things might be changing."
Security

Could the Internet Be Taken Down In 30 Minutes? 289

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the millions-of-voices-suddenly-cried-out-in-terror dept.
GhostX9 writes "Tom's Hardware recently interviewed Dino A. Dai Zovi, a former member of Sandia National Labs' IDART (the guys who test the security of national agencies). Although most of the interview is focused on personal computer security, they asked him about L0pht's claim in 1998 if the Internet could still be taken down in 30 minutes given the advances on both the security and threat sides. He said that the risk was still true."

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