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Comment Re:Dubious figures (Score 1) 275

by blitzkrieg3 (#29567533) Attached to: How To Save $1 Trillion a Year With Open Source

"Support" doesn't mean "set up your system for you"...people seem to get that confused a lot. It means that if something isn't working as designed, they (the support people) will help you figure out why.

As a person who works for a company that sells Linux support, I can say that support means a lot more than that. While it does not mean "set up your system for you", it can mean making the process of setting up the system easier, or helping debug the customers "set up the system" script. And more often than not the system is "working as designed", just it was either designed counter-intuitively or it's not working as expected by the user. The support person will help you through that. Hell, as a support person I've even patched a customer's C code for them after an API change, even though it was technically out of SLA.

Comment Re:Classic Cars (Score 4, Insightful) 496

by blitzkrieg3 (#29558585) Attached to: '09 Malibu Vs. '59 Bel Air Crash Test
I'm not sure why everyone keeps bringing this up. IIHS doesn't consider it pointless to demonstratably show how far we've come since they started improving vehicle safety way back when. Additionally, it's an easy way to showcase the importance of the organization to the general public, kind of like how NASA highlights it's spacewalks and additional modules to the ISS even though most of what they do is boring research.
Medicine

Taking Showers Can Be Harmful To Your Health 431

Posted by timothy from the healthiest-guy-alive dept.
TheClockworkSoul writes "According to both the BBC and NewScientist, showering may be bad for your health. Apparently, dirty shower heads can be an ideal breeding ground for Mycobacterium avium, a bug responsible for a type of pulmonary disease more prevalent than tuberculosis in developed countries, cases of which have risen in parallel with the rise in showering. Tests revealed nearly a third of devices harbor significant levels of the critter."

Comment Re:No retention? (Score 1) 184

by blitzkrieg3 (#29405217) Attached to: Boston City Government Discovers Email Retention

According to the Massachusetts secretary of state, the state public records law requires municipal employees to save electronic correspondence for at least two years, even if the contents are of "no informational or evidential value." The only e-mails that can be deleted are those containing completely inconsequential information, such as spam or questions about lunch orders.

So what? It shouldn't be left up to the end user to decide whether the email should be retained or not. Who's to say that a message titled, "Here's the $20k bribe for the big dig contract" doesn't contain spam or other "completely inconsequential information"?
Security

Google Groups Used To Control Botnets 63

Posted by Soulskill from the easier-than-by-carrier-pigeon-in-most-cases dept.
oDDmON oUT writes "'Maintaining a reliable command and control (C&C) structure is a priority for back door Trojan writers. ... Symantec has observed an interesting variation on this concept in the wild. A back door Trojan that we are calling Trojan.Grups has been using the Google Groups newsgroups to distribute commands,' writes Symantec employee Gavin O Gorman. He goes on to state that 'the Trojan itself is quite simple. It is distributed as a DLL,' and while the decrypted commands indicate it is used 'for reconnaissance and targeted attacks,' he does go on record as saying, 'It's worth noting that Google Groups is not at fault here; rather, it is a neutral party. The authors of this threat have chosen Google Groups simply for its bevy of features and versatility.'"
The Internet

Submission + - In 2010 the World Runs Out Of IPv4 Addresses (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by blitzkrieg3
blitzkrieg3 writes: Ars has an excellent writeup of the coming end of the IPv4 Address space, as well as in depth technical reasoning behind it. From the article:

Either by choice or otherwise, the big ISPs will soon have to stop giving each customer an IPv4 address of his or her own. Giving those customers just IPv6 is not an option, as the majority of the services are still IPv4-only and many IP-capable devices that don't run a full operating system (smartphones, VoIP phones, webcams) don't support IPv6. So that means stretching the existing IPv4 addresses in some way through "carrier grade NAT" (CGN).

Assuming the ISPs don't strip people of their current IPv4 address, Apple users may be in the best shape.
Education

Submission + - Does your college or university support Linux? 4

Submitted by yuna49
yuna49 writes: Lately I have been visiting colleges with my daughter who's a senior in high school. Every school has proudly announced that they support both Windows and Macs, and most of these schools report having about a 50-50 split between the two technologies. However we've been a Linux household for many years now, and my daughter routinely uses a laptop running Kubuntu 9.04. Sometimes I would ask the student tour guide if Linux was supported and was usually met with a blank stare. We're obviously not concerned about whether she can write papers using OpenOffice and Linux. Rather we've been wondering about using other computing services on campus like classroom applications, remote printing, VPNs, or wifi support (nearly all these campuses have ubiquitous wifi). Given the composition of Slashdot's readership, I thought I'd pose the question here. Does your school support Linux? Have you found it difficult or impossible to use Linux in concert with the school's computing services?
Security

Symantec Wants To Use Victims To Hunt Computer Criminals 139

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the cyber-vigilante-network dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Business Week reports that security experts plan to recruit victims and other computer users to help them go on the offensive and hunt down hackers. '"It's time to stop building burglar alarms to keep people out and go after the bad guys," says Rowan Trollope, senior vice-president for consumer products at Symantec, the largest maker of antivirus software. Symantec will ask customers to opt in to a program that will collect data about attempted computer intrusions and then forward the information to authorities. Symantec will also begin posting the FBI's top 10 hackers and their schemes on its Web site, where customers go for software updates and next year the company will begin offering cash bounties for information leading to an arrest. The strategy has its risks as hackers who find novices on their trail may trash their computers or steal their identities as punishment. Citizen hunters could also become cybervigilantes and harm bystanders as they pursue criminals but Symantec is betting customers won't mind being disrupted if they can help snare the bad guys. "I'm convinced we can clean up the Internet in 10 years if we can peel away the dirt and show people the threats they're facing," says Trollope.'"

Comment Re:Palin? (Score 1) 187

by blitzkrieg3 (#29314269) Attached to: How a Team of Geeks Cracked the Spy Trade
I read the books... 8 years ago.

Seeing as how the first 3 comments (including mine) are of the form "What's the reference?" and the 4th is of the form "The reference is..." I believe you're requiring %90 of /. must turn in their geek cards.

Either that or kdawson is an epic troll.
Space

Astronomers Find the Calmest Place On Earth 231

Posted by Soulskill from the i-can-see-clearly-now dept.
The Narrative Fallacy writes "Live Science reports that astronomers in search of the perfect site to take pictures of the heavens have combined data from satellites, ground stations and climate models in a study to assess the many factors that affect image quality — cloud cover, temperature, sky-brightness, water vapor, wind speeds and atmospheric turbulence. They have pinpointed the coldest, driest, calmest place on earth, known simply as Ridge A, 13,297 feet high on the Antarctic Plateau. 'It's so calm that there's almost no wind or weather there at all,' says study leader Will Saunders, of the Anglo-Australian Observatory. 'The astronomical images taken at Ridge A should be at least three times sharper than at the best sites currently used by astronomers.' Located within the Australian Antarctic Territory, the site is 89 miles from the PLATO (PLATeau Observatory) international robotic observatory. The new site would be superior to the best existing observatories on high mountain tops in Hawaii and Chile, Saunders says. 'Because the sky there is so much darker and drier, it means that a modestly-sized telescope would be as powerful as the largest telescopes anywhere else on earth.'"

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