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Stunts, Idiocy, and Hero Hacks 208

Posted by samzenpus from the when-it-just-has-to-get-done dept.
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Paul Venezia serves up six real-world tales of IT stunts and solutions that required a touch of inspired insanity to pull off, proving once again that knowing when to throw out the manual and do something borderline irresponsible is essential to day-to-day IT work. 'It could be server on the brink of shutting down all operations, a hard drive that won't power up vital data, or a disgruntled ex-employee who's hidden vital system passwords on the network. Just when all seems lost, it's time to get creative and don your IT daredevil cap, then fire up the oven, shove the end of a pencil into the motherboard, or route the whole city network through your laptop to get the job done,' Venezia writes."
Input Devices

USB Is the Devil's Connection 474

Posted by CmdrTaco from the god-bless-the-loons dept.
Jamie handed us Satan's Data Connection. You see, sane and rational human being, the USB logo is actually in the shape of a trident, and the obvious action to Evangelical Christians in Brazil is to ban its use. Hopefully they don't mispronounce SCSI and find themselves lusting after their PCs.
Facebook

Google Asks Users To Complain Against Facebook 218

Posted by CmdrTaco from the battle-of-the-billions dept.
dkd903 writes "A kind of war has been going on recently between Facebook and Google over a contact export issue. First, Google blocked Facebook access to the Gmail contacts API. To this, Facebook responded back with a new method to get Gmail contacts of a user (the download contacts option). And now Google has slapped back again at Facebook and asks users indirectly to file a data protectionism complaint against Facebook. When a Facebook user clicks on the Download Your Contacts button on the 'Facebook import contact via Gmail' page, the user is then redirected to a new page on Google's server, which looks something like this..." Can I just say that watching this is absolutely hysterical?

Comment Ubuntu is *NOT* ditching gnome (Score 5, Informative) 514

by arhhook (#34012580) Attached to: Ubuntu Moves Away From GNOME

There is going to be some questions about this decision in relation to GNOME. I want to make something crystal clear: Ubuntu is GNOME distribution, we ship the GNOME stack, we will continue to ship GNOME apps, and we optimize Ubuntu for GNOME. The only difference is that Unity is a different shell for GNOME, but we continue to support the latest GNOME Shell development work in the Ubuntu archives.

Jono Bacon from http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/10/25/ubuntu-11-04-to-ship-unity/
Businesses

LSE Breaks World Record In Trade Speed With Linux 452

Posted by timothy from the linus-mentioned-their-startling-speed dept.
LingNoi writes with this excerpt from ComputerWorld UK: "The London Stock Exchange has said its new Linux-based system is delivering world record networking speed, with 126 microsecond trading times. The news comes ahead a major Linux-based switchover in twelve days, during which the open source system will replace Microsoft .Net technology on the group's main stock exchange. The LSE had long been criticised on speed and reliability, grappling with trading speeds of several hundred microseconds. The 126 microsecond speed is 'twice as fast' as its main international competitors, the London Stock Exchange said. BATS Europe and Chi-X, two dedicated electronic rivals to the LSE, are reported to have an average latency of 250 and 175 microseconds respectively. Neither company immediately provided details. But many of the LSE's older and more traditional rivals offer speeds of around 300 to 400 microseconds. Nevertheless, Linux is now standard in many exchanges, including the New York Stock Exchange."
Microsoft

Submission + - WSJ rumors that VMware will buy Novell (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by postbigbang
postbigbang writes: Steven J Vaughn-Nichols speculates on the WSJ piece that speculates VMware may be buying Novell's Linux assets (along with other core Novell assets). Will Big Red be Big Dead? Will SUSE be used as a fighting tool against Windows platforms? Will ex-Microsoft throne pretender Paul Maritz use Novell's Directory Services to sling against Microsoft? Discuss.

Comment Our University... (Score 1) 305

by arhhook (#33256664) Attached to: Stupid Data Center Tricks

Our University was brought to it's knees when a student in the residents halls was putzing around and accidentally installed a DHCP server on his box. Because the effects were unknown to the student that installed the DHCP server, it took about a day before they knew what was going on and disabled his switchport on the network.
Apple

iPad Owners Are 'Selfish Elites' 780

Posted by CmdrTaco from the sounds-about-right dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It's not exactly official, but should also surprise no one: According to a new study the psychological profile of iPad owners can be summed up as 'selfish elites' while have-not critics are 'independent geeks.' Consumer research firm MyType conducted the study, in which opinions of 20,000 people were analyzed between March and May. The firm's conclusion was that iPad owners tend to be wealthy, sophisticated, highly educated and disproportionately interested in business and finance, while they scored terribly in the areas of altruism and kindness. In other words, 'selfish elites.'"
Iphone

Consumer Reports Can't Recommend iPhone 4 507

Posted by kdawson from the waiting-for-four-dot-one dept.
jbezorg was one among many readers to send word that Consumer Reports has concluded that they cannot recommend the iPhone 4. (They still enthusiastically recommend the 3G S.) "It's official. Consumer Reports' engineers have just completed testing the iPhone 4, and have confirmed that there is a problem with its reception. When your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone's lower left side — an easy thing, especially for lefties — the signal can significantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you're in an area with a weak signal. Due to this problem, we can't recommend the iPhone 4. ... Our findings call into question the recent claim by Apple that the iPhone 4's signal-strength issues were largely an optical illusion caused by faulty software that 'mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.'" The comments on the article don't display any of the vitriol the Apple faithful have been known to unleash upon anyone daring to question the Cupertino way. Perhaps they are moderated.

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