Comment Something simple (Score 4, Insightful) 71
The most appreciative thing you could do for the preservation of history is to place static simple RSS files at those addresses that include a link to your archives for the event.
IMarv
Microsoft Shoots Own Foot In Iceland 476
David Gerard writes "The Microsoft Certified Partner model is: an MCP buys contracts from Microsoft and sells them to businesses as a three-year timed contract, payable in annual installments. Iceland's economy has collapsed, so 1500 businesses have gone bankrupt and aren't paying the fees any more. But Microsoft has told the MCPs: 'Our deal was with you, not them. Pay up.' The MCPs that don't go bankrupt in turn are moving headlong to Free Software, taking most of the country with them. (Warning: link contains strong language and vivid imagery.)"
Comment Public Domain! (Score 4, Informative) 271
Why is the term "out-of-copyright" being used instead of "public domain"?
When a copyrighted work's copyright expires, it goes into the public domain, which means there are no restrictions upon the work at all.
IMarv
Comment eeebuntu (Score 4, Informative) 466
You may wish to try http://www.eeebuntu.org/ which is NOT the same as Ubuntu-eee.
It has worked decently on my 1000HD.
IMarv
Comment Re:Hollywood learned the same lesson long ago (Score 1) 763
Keep in mind that most movies make back some or all of their production cost before going to DVD. Video is icing, not the cake.
Comment Definitely (Score 1) 763
The $60 price point has really turned me off from gaming. Alone the $60 game might not be a killer. But combined with the game industry's obsession with pleasing hard-core gamers you have a recipe for me walking away from gaming. Why would I pay $60 for a game that requires me to unlock most of the content? Or for a game that requires lots of trial-and-error? Or for a game that was released unfinished with showstopping bugs? I'd rather stick with $10 downloads.
Comment How it really works (Score 1) 1055
The 9/80 work schedule is a scam. Youâ(TM)ll have worked the 80 hours, but on Friday there will be a big meeting and youâ(TM)ll need to work. The next off Friday some important maintenance task will come up and youâ(TM)ll need to work. After that there will be a client interaction and youâ(TM)ll need to work. Your company will not pay you overtime for any of these extra Fridays because youâ(TM)re a salaried professional.
Itâ(TM)s a trap!
Comment Take what you can get! (Score 1) 372
Right now is a terrible time to be looking for an entry-level niche position. Those jobs are being filled by mid and senior level workers who just got laid off and will work for an entry level salary to keep their family fed. And if you do get a niche job, youâ(TM)re likely to become the new senior technician when the more expensive hackers get laid off and their jobs are dumped on youâ"which is not a fun situation to be in.
What you need to do is get into a whatever IT job you can, keep working on security stuff at home or in test labs at work, and ride the recession out. Make connections. If you have security people on staff get to know them and show interest so that you might get promoted when something opens up. But whatever you do, donâ(TM)t sit around unemployed and hoping that the perfect niche job pops up, because in this economy thatâ(TM)s not likely to happen.
Comment Re:Just give up? (Score 2, Informative) 711
The article says the data recovery company has found the drives wiped. There is no recoverable data.
It seems like the actual site failure was on the 23rd or so.
IMarv
PS, the internet archive was blocked by their robots, so there isn't even that to look at. http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.journalspace.com
Comment Re:Dear Every Corporate Tool in the Universe: (Score 1) 711
Do the backups, then charge them back-costs on the service they didn't think they needed, but now do. If not, let them play with the disk recovery companies, etc.
IMarv
Comment No thanks. (Score 2, Informative) 668
I tried Songbird, and noticed it was using up about 3 times the RAM iTunes uses. And for what? A bunch of extra crap I wonâ(TM)t use. Itâ(TM)s like these guys took notes from the OpenOffice team on how to make a crappy interface that loads slowly and then goes on a RAM eating rampage.
Comment But EasyDNS does have an API! (Score 1) 221
EasyDNS does have an API for "Dynamic" IP addresses.
Their clients are listed here: http://support.easydns.com/dyndns.php
And the API is here:
http://support.easydns.com/tutorials/dynamicUpdateSpecs.php
IMarv.
Submission + - CIA claims power grid hacked (pcworld.com)
supabeast! writes: PC world reports that the CIA claims hackers have successfully intruded, via the internet, into computers controlling the American power grid. The hackers then attempted to extort money from their victims, and have even caused power blackouts, on at least on occasion affecting multiple American cities.
Journal Journal: Disagree\Kook Moderation
I saw "there isn't a -1 disagree modifier for a reason, -1 offtopic and -1 troll aren't valid substitutes." in a user's tag line in Slashdot today.
I think there should be such a moderation. I know I can actually alter the values of the moderation and set it to zero. Perhaps it should default to a 0 modification and users can set it to -1. I could see value in at least giving people who think other users's comments are wrong or kooks a place to vent it. This would allow those of us who
Submission + - VM-based rootkits proved easily detectable (stanford.edu)
paleshadows writes: A year and a half has passed since
SubVirt, the first VMM (virtual machine monitor) based rootkit, was introduced.
The idea spawned two lively slashdot discussions:
the first, which followed
the initial report about SubVirt,
and
the second, which was conducted after
Joanna Rutkowska
has
recycled the idea (apparently without giving credit to the initial authors).
Conversely, in this year's HotOS workshop,
researchers from Stanford, CMU, VMware, and XenSource have published a paper titled
"
Compatibility Is Not Transparency: VMM Detection Myths and Realities"
which shows that VMM-based rootkits are actually easily detectable.
The introduction of the paper explains that
"While commodity VMMs conform to the PC architecture, virtual implementations of this architecture differ substantially from physical implementations. These differences are not incidental: performance demands and practical engineering limitations necessitate divergences (sometimes radical ones) from native hardware, both in semantics and performance. Consequently, we believe the potential for preventing VMM detection under close scrutiny is illusory — and fundamentally in conflict with the technical limitations of virtualized platforms."
The paper concludes by saying that
"Perhaps the most concise argument against the utility of VMBRs (VM-based rootkits) is: "Why bother?" VMBRs change the malware defender's problem from a very difficult one (discovering whether the trusted computing base of a system has been compromised), to the much easier problem of detecting a VMM."
"While commodity VMMs conform to the PC architecture, virtual implementations of this architecture differ substantially from physical implementations. These differences are not incidental: performance demands and practical engineering limitations necessitate divergences (sometimes radical ones) from native hardware, both in semantics and performance. Consequently, we believe the potential for preventing VMM detection under close scrutiny is illusory — and fundamentally in conflict with the technical limitations of virtualized platforms."
The paper concludes by saying that
"Perhaps the most concise argument against the utility of VMBRs (VM-based rootkits) is: "Why bother?" VMBRs change the malware defender's problem from a very difficult one (discovering whether the trusted computing base of a system has been compromised), to the much easier problem of detecting a VMM."
