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Comment Re:New military branch needed (Score 1) 131

by Ektanoor (#28145951) Attached to: Who Would Want To Be Obama's Cybersecurity Czar?

A military branch to fight crime? While I agree th US doesn't need a "czar" and even agree with your arguments, your alternative is not brighter.

Crime shall no be fought by the military in any possible way. First they will shoot and then... They will not give themselves the question "whom are we shooting at"! They will keep shooting until the field is flat.

Second, a military environment is always preemable to crime. BTW, I have already had to deal with such a case on Internet: military+cybergangs. If you want a pure "catch 22" burning under your... You know where... Just give the military a free hand on this field.

Third, military will never give themselves the trouble of building an infrastructure of databases and longterm tracking procedures. Their methods are simple - there is a foe, track him and shoot on the spot.

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention. Military intelligence is usually... Not so intelligent. Even foes are so badly defined, that things go wrong from the very start. They call it "colateral", I call it "dumbasses".
Medicine

Submission + - How Common is Scientific Misconduct?

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The image of scientists as objective seekers of truth is periodically jeopardized by the discovery of a major scientific fraud. Recent scandals like Hwang Woo-Suk's fake stem-cell lines or Jan Hendrik Schön's duplicated graphs showed how easy it can be for a scientist to publish fabricated data in the most prestigious journals. Daniele Fanelli has an interesting paper on PLOS One where she performs a meta-analysis synthesizing previous surveys to determine the frequency with which scientists fabricate and falsify data, or commit other forms of scientific misconduct. A pooled weighted average of 1.97% of scientists admitted to have fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once -a serious form of misconduct by any standard- and up to 33.7% admitted other questionable research practices. In surveys asking about the behavior of colleagues, admission rates were 14.12% for falsification, and up to 72% for other questionable research practices. Misconduct was reported more frequently by medical/pharmacological researchers than others. "Considering that these surveys ask sensitive questions and have other limitations, it appears likely that this is a conservative estimate of the true prevalence of scientific misconduct," writes Fanelli. "It is likely that, if on average 2% of scientists admit to have falsified research at least once and up to 34% admit other questionable research practices, the actual frequencies of misconduct could be higher than this.""
Space

Submission + - Discovery: Even Tiny Stars Have Planets (space.com) 2

Submitted by
Paul server guy
Paul server guy writes: "From a story at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090528-exoplanet-small-star.html — A Jupiter-like planet has been discovered orbiting one of the smallest stars known, suggesting that planets could be more common than previously thought.
"This is an exciting discovery because it shows that planets can be found around extremely lightweight stars," said Wesley Traub, the chief scientist for NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "This is a hint that nature likes to form planets, even around stars very different from the sun."

Astrometry was first attempted 50 years ago to search for planets outside our solar system, but the method requires very precise measurements over long periods of time, and until now, has failed to turn up any exoplanets.
The technique involves measuring the precise motions of a star on the sky as an unseen planet tugs the star back and forth.
The discovery will be detailed in the Astrophysical Journal.

The newfound exoplanet, called VB 10b, is about 20 light-years away in the constellation Aquila (a light-year is the distance that light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles or 10 trillion kilometers). It is a gas giant, with a mass six times that of Jupiter, and an orbit far enough away from its star to be labeled a "cold Jupiter" similar to our own.

In reality, though, the planet's own internal heat would give it an Earth-like temperature.

The planet's star, called VB 10, is tiny. It is what's known as an M-dwarf and is only one-twelfth the mass of our sun, just barely big enough to fuse atoms at its core and shine with starlight."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Ext4: Stable for production systems? 1

Submitted by dr_dracula
dr_dracula writes: Earlier this year the ext4 filesystem was accepted into the Linux kernel. Shortly thereafter it was discovered that applications, such as KDE, were at risk of loosing files when used on top of ext4 http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/19/1730247. This was diagnosed as a rift between the design of the ext4 filesystem and the design of applications running on top of ext4. The crux of the problem was that applications were relying on ext3 specific behavior for flushing data to disk, which ext4 was not following. Recent kernel releases include patches to address these issues. My questions to the early adopters of ext4 is if the patches have performed as expected. What is your overall feeling about ext4? Do you think is solid enough for most users to trust it with their data? Did you find any significant performance improvements compared to ext3? Is there any incentive to move to ext4, other than sheer curiosity?
Security

Submission + - L0phtcrack (v6) rises again

Submitted by FyreWyr
FyreWyr writes: L0phtcrack--now 12 years old--used to be a security "tool of choice" for black hats, pen-testers, and security auditors alike...that is, until it was sold by L0pht to @stake, then Symantec, to be released and subsequently dropped as LC 5. As an IT security consultant, I used this tool to regularly expose vulnerabilities or recover data when there were few other options available...then let it go as tech evolved away.

Now returned to its original developers, version 6 was released this week with fresh features: support for 64-bit multiprocessors, (current) Unix and Windows operating systems, and a number of other features, including enhanced handling of NTLM password hashes (indicated here) and support for rainbow tables.

Interested parties--especially consultants--will find this shiny new version sports a hefty price tag. It raises doubts in my mind whether it can effectively compete with open source alternatives by similar names, but as I found earlier versions so useful, its re-emergence seems worth the mention.
Networking

Submission + - Help build an AI brain! (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by Sonoflin
Sonoflin writes: Much like SETI@Home Singularity Hub (http://singularityhub.com/2009/05/28/create-an-ai-on-your-computer/) is running a story detailing how you can help researchers at intelligence realm (http://www.intelligencerealm.com/user/system.php) create a software based map of the brain using only your idle CPU cycles! Ultimately they hope this work will lend a hand in the blooming AI research arena.
Security

Submission + - Obama's cybersecurity plan echoes Bush's failures (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: President Obama on Friday presented his long-awaited cybersecurity plan, which included the establishment of a new White House office headed by a cybersecurity "coordinator" who would oversee and advise Obama on this issue. He also proposed hiring a separate official dedicated to privacy and civil liberties concerns. The proposal, which bears a striking resemblance to the six-year-old National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, is ambitious in its scope and scale and it likely will face many of the same roadblocks that previous efforts in this area have faced. Obama should send a short and sweet memo to the heads of all of the federal agencies, saying, "This is my cybersecurity coordinator. He speaks directly for me on this issue. Listen to him. If you're not interested in helping me fix this problem--which you all helped create, by the way--then step aside. Adults are working here."
Earth

Submission + - 50 Days of Indigenous Protests in Peru (amazonwatch.org)

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The major media in the United States have been eerily silent about it, but there have been 50 days of protests in the Amazon rainforest area of Peru over the Government's possibly illegal decrees authorizing invasion of the rainforest for further oil exploration. Thousands of indigenous rainforest inhabitants have massed in demonstrations throughout the region, and there have been attacks by the police and military, causing a number of injuries and at least one death among the tribespeople. On Tuesday, May 26th, there was a march and protest in Los Angeles, led by actress Q'orianka Kilcher, whose blog post about Tuesday's demonstration includes an 8 minute video. I feel the issue is of such importance, and is receiving such short shrift from the American media, that I've decided I'd better keep my own collection of links on the subject. The Guardian, BBC, and Reuters in the UK are all providing some coverage, including videos of the police riots, but I have to backtrack to locate the links to those stories."
The Military

Submission + - Pentagon Plans New Arm to Wage CyberWars 3

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The NY Times reports that the Pentagon plans to create a new military command for cyberspace, administration officials say, stepping up preparations by the armed forces to conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare. Obama is expected to sign a classified order in coming weeks that will create the military cybercommand, The decision to create a cybercommand is a major step beyond the actions taken by the Bush administration, which authorized several computer-based attacks but never resolved the question of how the government would prepare for a new era of warfare fought over digital networks. The main dispute has been over whether the Pentagon or the National Security Agency should take the lead in preparing for and fighting cyberbattles. Under one proposal still being debated, parts of the NSA would be integrated into the military command so they could operate jointly. Officials declined to describe potential offensive operations, but said they now viewed cyberspace as comparable to more traditional battlefields. "We are not comfortable discussing the question of offensive cyberoperations, but we consider cyberspace a war-fighting domain," said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman. "We need to be able to operate within that domain just like on any battlefield, which includes protecting our freedom of movement and preserving our capability to perform in that environment.""
Government

Submission + - Obama admin opposing copyright exception for blind (boingboing.net) 1

Submitted by esme
esme writes: Over at Boing Boing, there's a scoop on the Obama administration joining with other western countries to block a treaty that would create international standards for copyright exceptions for the blind and others who need technology to read. Activists at the WIPO negotiations are trying to get the word out that lobbying from publishers has caused the US, Canada, the EU, Australia, New Zealand, the Vatican and Norway to oppose the treaty.
The Internet

Submission + - 7Million UK Broadband Users Download Illegal Files (ispreview.co.uk) 3

Submitted by
MJackson
MJackson writes: "An advisor to the UK government, the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property Policy (SABIP), has published the results of two recently commissioned literature reviews into intellectual property and the behaviours of Digital Consumers in the online world. The studies reveal that approximately 7 million people in the UK are involved with illegal file sharing, accounting for over half of the country's total Internet traffic. The governments Lord Carter is expected to outline his plans for tackling this problem when, sometime over the next few weeks, he reveals the final Digital Britain report. Disconnecting users from their ISP is unlikely to be an option but could still appear."

Comment Eee PC regular user (Score 1) 644

by Ektanoor (#28125067) Attached to: Asus Slaps Linux In the Face

Bought it with Windows pre-installed.

For two weeks my biggest fear was when this crap will finally fry the machine. And just for nothing. The launching of some pretty secondary programs was enough to see things going really hot, stupidly slow and disk stressing.

Oh. And I didn't mention that battery lasted for less than half an hour? That's pretty powerful when you are running on public transport and get a emergency call from the office.

Linux did not solve certain risks. However, it made them completely manageable. Besides, it gave several working scenarios. Pretty important if you are looking to be on batteries for a few hours.

So, I my opinion is that "unfamiliar environment" and "major compatibility issues' are advertinsing calls for braindead jerks who really don't have a need for a netbook, except for some exciting glamour of dubious nature. No one likes to see a machine freezing in the middle of a serious issue. I had this with Windows twice in a week. And while on Windows, I had to think not only on my work but also on which next step I should not do or else the machine goes down.

On Linux, I had only one hangup in nearly a year and fortunately not related to a emergency. Just hanged up, I could not find a clear reason for it.

I'll keep using the Eee PC and probably buy a new one. They are the little powerhorses I've been waiting for long. But that "Better With Windows"... In a biomedical environment there are no "betters with". It works,,, Or it is pure crap.

Windows IS pure crap on my Eee PC.
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows 7 Hard Drive and SSD Performance Analyzed (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
bigwophh
bigwophh writes: "Despite the fact that it is based on many of the same core elements a Vista, Microsoft claims Windows 7 is a different sort of animal and that it should be looked at in a fresh new light, especially in terms of performance. With that in mind, this article looks at how various types of disks perform under Windows 7, both of the traditional platter based variety and newer solid state disks. Disk performance between Vista and Win7 is compared using a hard drive and an SSD. SSD performance with and without TRIM enabled is tested. And application performance is tested on a variety of drives. Looking at the performance data, it seems MS has succeeded in improving Windows 7 disk performance, particularly with regard to solid state drives."

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