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Quake

Submission + - Island Raised by Earthquake

Submitted by
StupiderThanYou
StupiderThanYou writes: " ABC News Australia is reporting that the island of Ranongga in the Solomon Islands has been lifted three metres higher above sea level by a magnitude 8.1 earthquake on the 2nd of April. A surrounding coral reef popular with scuba divers is now dying in the sunlight, and there are fissures opened up in the island and surrounding seabed. At least they'll be under less threat from rising sea levels."
Windows

Submission + - Is Wine or Vista more Windows compatible?

Submitted by ZMXJ
ZMXJ writes: We've been hearing quite a few anecdotes & reviews that complain about poor compatibility of old hardware and pre-vista-windows software with Vista; and quite a few articles about improved compatibility of Wine.

My suspicion is that Linux has much better hardware compatibility with Win2K era PCs than Vista does; and my suspicion is that the software compatibility of Wine vs Vista for Win2K apps is about the same. But before I make a recommendation that upgrading to Wine would be better than upgrading to Vista in our company, I wanted to Ask Slashdot to see what other people's experiences with either transition have been like. So far our company has no experience with Vista nor Wine/Linux (quite a bit of Win2K & Linux experience, though). Any experience you guys had moving ot to Vista or to Wine would be of interest.

Would an upgrade from Win2K to Vista or an upgrade from Win2K to Wine/Linux be less painful?
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Identifying computer components

Submitted by
RedMage13
RedMage13 writes: "Many people like me have found a box of computer parts at a yard sale, and picked them up merely because they're cheap, and could possibly be salvaged for use. I recently became an owner of one such box of parts, but I have no idea how to find out how powerful any of the parts are, and there are several whose function seems impossible to determine due to a lack of any tags/FCC IDs. Surely some of my fellow Slashdotters will be able to share some tips for all of us suckers who are holding onto boxes full of crap that we don't know is useful at all."
The Internet

Submission + - Karl Rove uses unauthorized email server

Submitted by
JenniefromtheShire
JenniefromtheShire writes: "http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/3/24/172031 /681

From citizen92 at dailykos.com:

Karl Rove and GWB43.com — Huge National Security Threat?
by citizen92 [Subscribe]

Sat Mar 24, 2007 at 02:36:13 PM PDT

Over the past few days, there have been many great diaries about the recent discovery of the gwb43.com e-mail system. A story in the National Journal (only available by subcription) yesterday added an additional nugget — that Karl Rove does 95% of his e-mailing over that server. Nice. And end run around the Presidential Records Act. And a political move to hide what could be incriminating records.

What has not yet been mentioned, however, is the likely huge national security breach that might have resulted from Karl's cavalier practices.

Bear with me.

citizen92's diary :: ::
The White House is a huge target for electronic espionage by friendly and hostile foreign powers. For those of you who may have visited Washington, this may be evident when you stroll by the various embassies scattered around the city — with their unusual sculptures of antennas and wires on their roofs. The Russians have a compound just three blocks north of the White House.

The US Government spends undisclosed amounts on countermeasures to protect its critical information and its secure networks. And it has the experts to make sure that those countermeasures are working.

But, as usual, the government is focused on the foes outside — not the foes within. Government, meet Karl Rove's OpSec (operational security) program.

As you read, I would have to guess (but I have absolutely no knowlegde if this is true or not) that foreign intelligence services have already paid thorough visits to the various servers that are operated by the RNC down in Chattanooga. You know, GWB43.com. RNCHQ.COM. Bobcorker.com. Why? Well, it's been made pretty clear that Karl Rove conducts business through those domains. 95% of his business. And so do other senior White House staff. If you were a foreign spy, wouldn't you be interested? And might it be a possibility, that MAYBE the RNC servers aren't quite as secure as the government servers? MAYBE?

If I were an Information Security Officer for the White House, my system would be "flashing red." Don't forget that Karl Rove is a Deputy Chief of Staff (the number 3 position) at the White House. He likely see's PDB's and other classified information. And for him to be able to do 95% of his work from the RNC account, he would have to get some of this information flowing from the White House network. Heck, maybe he forwards his eop.gov e-mail to the RNC account.

Point being, this could represent a HUGE SECURITY BREACH. I hope that the RNC servers have been seized by someone in US Government (NSA, CIA or otherwise) to find out exactly what has happened here. And I really hope that political muscle hasn't blocked that.

There is a lot more riding on this than just Karl Rove's political future....

****UPDATE****

Commenter kck suggested that I also point out a few more relevant details.

The "private email addresses" that Rove and some unidentified quantity of White House and possibly other government officials tracks back to a company called Smartech based in Chatanooga, TN. There are some interesting observations about Smartech at Cannonfire's blog, specifically that the gwb43.com domain shares a mailserver with other domains, including:

bcorker.com
bobcorkerforsenate.com
consultmhi.com
georgewbush.com
gop.com
gop.net
gop.org
gopcontact.com
gopemail.com
gopteamleader.com
govtechsolutions.com
newt.org
ohiogop.org
republicanvictoryteam.com
republicanvictoryteam.net
republicanvictoryteam.org
rga.org
rnc.org
rnchq.org
socialsecurityblueprint.com
speakergingrich.com
speakergingrich.net
technomania.com
thehuntercompanies.com
thirdwave2.com
thirdwave2.net
winningwomen.com
wrcb.com
wrcb.net
Cannonfire also observes that the Ohio 2004 election results were tallied on systems maintained by Smartech. Curious yet?

****SUNDAY UPDATE****

Commenter Rosaura makes an excellent observation on the root of the criminality of this whole outside e-mail system.

Tonight I stumbled across the collection of Abramoff emails connected with the Indian Gaming hoo-haw, and sure enough, Susan Ralston was using SusanRalston@gwb, sralston@georgewbush.com, sralston@aol.com, and sRalston@rnchq.org.

It's not as if these crooks didn't know it was wrong. Have a look at Rosaura">this email exchange at pages 113 and 118:

From: Abramoff, Jack (Dir-DC-Gov)[/o=GTLAW/ou=WDC/cn=Recipients/cn=abra moffj] on behalf of Abramoff, Jack (Dir-DC-Gov)
Sent: Friday, February 07, 2003 10:25 AM
To: Ring, Kevin (Shld-DC-Gov)
Subject: RE: email on jena

Dammit. It was sent to Susan on her mc pager and was not supposed to go into the WH system.

— Original Message —
From: Ring, Kevin (Shld-DC-Gov)
Sent: Friday, February 07, 2003 10:26 AM
To: Abramoff, Jack (Dir-DC-Gov)
Subject email on jena

Your email to Susan was forwarded to Ruben Barrales and on to Jen Farley, who read it to me last night. I don't know what to think about this, but she said is better not to put this stuff in writing in their email system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc. Who knows? Just letting you know what she said, Anyway, I had called her to talk about Jena. She has not heard from anyone on the other side of this issue.

— Original Message —
From: abramoff
Sent: Thursday, February 06, 2003 4:24 PM
To: Susan Ralston
Subject: Louisiana

I don't want to bother you guys with a meeting request, so I was hoping you could pass on to Karl that Interior is about to approve a gaming compact and land in trust for a tribe which is an anathema to .....
Two things we learn here.

1/Abramoff was aware of the need to lob e-mails outside of the White House e-mail system. And Abramoff is a crook.

2/Jennifer Farley, the was aware of the need to send e-mails outside of the system, and she told Abramoff co-conspirator Kevin Ring as such.

Farley was not the Director of Intergovernmental Affairs. Nor was she the Deputy Director. Nor was she the Assistant Director. She was the Deputy Assistant Director. That's a low level staff position. A $35,000 year job.

Point being, if low-level staffer Jennifer Farley knew about the e-mail couching, then there had to be a policy mandating these procedures at the White House. And policies are set from the top."
Graphics

Submission + - The math of Graphics

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A lot of confusion arises when people attempt to do 3d graphics programming without the proper mathematical background in basic linear algebra. Christopher Evensen recently gave a talk covering covering the important fundamentals. The math is also accompanied by a real world programming example. The talk doesn't have anything ground breaking in it, but the format its presented in clearly shows how to apply the math to real world problems.
The Courts

Submission + - Louisiana city wins 2nd municipal fiber case

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The (Lafayette, La.) Daily Advertiser reports that the Louisiana Supreme Court today unanimously ruled in favor of Lafayette Utilities System in its fiber to the home legal battle. The city passed a referendum in July 2005 62%-38% to approve bond sales to fund its city-operated utility service's plan to lay fiber-to-the-home throughout the city (population about 112,000). Cox and BellSouth previously delayed it with a suit that failed; this decision is against a resident sued about the use of bond to fund the endeavor. According to LUS, "bonds could be issued in 2-3 months.. Eighteen months after the bonds are issued, some LUS customers could be using fiber." LUS already has paid $3.5 million in legal fees to get to this point.
Security

Submission + - Firewall Recommendations

Submitted by
anomalous cohort
anomalous cohort writes: "The company that I work for is looking at upgrading to a proper firewall (sadly, we use only the MS-ISA server now). Our I.T. guy is ready to recommend Fortigate [45]00a. Ours is a small company with about a dozen employees and about 400 customers. Does anybody have any experiences, good or bad, with these two products or with the Fortinet company? Are there any recommended firewalls (outside of Cisco's) that we should seriously look at?"
Software

Submission + - South African Government goes Open

Submitted by Jyms
Jyms writes: Seems like the South African government has finally taken the plunge and gone open. They have been making noises about this for some time. Hopefully they can pull this off. Wonder how long it will take before the man in the street notices. For more info see their OSS page.
Space

Submission + - Einstein's twin paradox resolved

Submitted by
slashthedot
slashthedot writes: "An Indian American scientist Subhash Kak from Louisiana State University has resolved the 100+ years old Einstein's twin paradox. "The fact that time slows down on moving objects has been documented and verified over the years through repeated experimentation. But, in the previous scenario, the paradox is that the earthbound twin is the one who would be considered to be in motion — in relation to the sibling — and therefore should be the one aging more slowly. Einstein and other scientists have attempted to resolve this problem before, but none of the formulas they presented proved satisfactory. Kak's findings were published online in the International Journal of Theoretical Science, and will appear in the upcoming print version of the publication."
"The implications of this resolution will be widespread, generally enhancing the scientific community's comprehension of relativity. It may eventually even have some impact on quantum communications and computers, potentially making it possible to design more efficient and reliable communication systems for space applications."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-02/lsu -lpr021407.php"

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