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Networking

Submission + - Why is the military REALLY blocking MySpace?

Lurker187 writes: OK, despite the subject, I'm not necessarily predisposed one way or the other. However, my last two routers for my home network allow me to deny access to certain domains, reserve bandwidth for certain uses, or limit the bandwidth devoted to certain uses. But, since I know very little about managing a huge network, I want to ask you: Is it really not possible for a large organization to limit the impact of surfing on their bandwidth, as the military seems to be claiming by omission? According to them, sites are being blocked ONLY because of the impact that users accessing those sites has on bandwidth. Is this common practice, are they lazy, are they maybe lacking the resources to allow them to prioritize bandwidth? I wonder whether a network admin could come up with a solution if they really wanted to allow these uses of the network.
Businesses

Submission + - Can you punish your users?

beerdini writes: Every company that I have worked for has an employee technology agreement that everyone that uses a computer needs to sign off on. The agreement usually says that failure to follow the rules will result in the termination of technology privileges. Has anyone ever worked at a place that actually has removed someone's technology privileges for a violation? In my opinion, doing this would be more a punishment for the person's co-workers since they would have to make up for that person's lost privileges, and management is usually unwilling to enforce the guidelines that they've spent countless hours discussing and printing on those documents that they make everyone sign. Are there any realistic forms of "punishment" that IT staff can enforce to teach their users to stop doing the things that are a violation of the workplace policy? Techniques that after getting proper authorization from supervisors that would punish the violating user but still allow them to perform the duties of their job?
Patents

Submission + - Brazil breaks patent on AIDS drug

gusmao writes: It is the first time Brazil has bypassed a patent to acquire cheaper drugs for its AIDS prevention program, although it has threatened to do so before to force drug makers to lower prices. Talks over the price of Merck's drug, Efavirenz, broke off on Thursday when the health ministry rejected the New Jersey-based company's offer to cut its price, $1.59 per pill, by 30 percent. Brazil wanted to pay what Merck charges Thailand, or $0.65 per pill.
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - World's first iPod piano dock

Anonymous Coward writes: "Pianos suck, unless of course they have an iPod dock. That's right. But after today, that's no longer a problem because PianoDisc this week introduced its iPod docking piano 'iQ' which it says though is patented technology will let almost any piano play itself according to the melody of the iPod. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1486 9"
Mozilla

Submission + - Open formats save the day

Amnl4ixoye writes: "This evening, I had the unfortunate experience of shift-deleting my entire Inbox for one of my accounts in Thunderbird. However, thanks in part to their openness of formats and standards, I was able to save the day by making some simple changes. Thank you open and clear formats!"
The Internet

Submission + - Internet social evolution moving faster than life

DarkenWood writes: What does the Slashdot community think of the idea that the social evolution of the internet is moving more rapidly along the Marxist progression towards a pure Communism? There seem to be many examples of this taking place in the form of Open Source Software, Creative Commons, open hardware, Wikipedia, etc... In what other ways do you see the social evolution of the internet moving faster than the individual, or collective, societies around the globe?
User Journal

Journal Journal: More ranting

Even I will admit - the quality of my journal posts has increasingly degraded over the past few months. However I am going to take it a step further, and throw in a random rant-of-the-day.

Businesses

Submission + - Build or Buy: Hire a Data Center?

bbsguru writes: "Our Government agency has around 100 independent divisions that share a dozen national applications and a private WAN. We are working to consolidate some of these applications (e-mail, SQL databases, specialized web services), and are facing a familiar choice.

One option is to contract out data hosting, e-mail server hosting, and so forth to various vendors (with negotiated SLA's and all the best guarantees, of course). We have already started doing this for our private WAN-to-World gateways, VPN management, and one major SQL application, each with a different vendor so far.

Others are advocating the creation of a national agency-owned facility, where employees would perform these functions instead of contractors. Network management, IDS, data replication and so forth, for all the consolidated applications under one umbrella.

The costs are always a factor, but the one-way nature of the contractor choice is also weighing in this decision. Some are concerned that if the expertise to create and manage these highly custom databases and services is farmed out to contractors, there will be no other choice in the future.

Trouble is, as we evaluate our options, the process of contracting out bits of the whole is already underway. With each new contract, one more service to be brought into a datacenter is lost, making the whole thing less practical.
Are we swimming upstream here? Is a series of contractors really the way to go, or are there real benefits to keeping it in house?"
Wireless Networking

RFID Fitted Throughout Tokyo Ginza Shopping Center 55

Liam Cromar writes "In one of several RFID trials being held in Japan, the famous Ginza shopping area in Tokyo has been blanketed with around 10,000 RFID tags and other beacons. The trial got underway earlier this month, and general trials should start on January 21st 2007. Four languages, including English, will be supported by the service, which uses hand-held RFID terminals to get information about shops in the centre, including special offers and restaurant menus."
Data Storage

Submission + - Memory storage for light-based computers

Roland Piquepaille writes: "In a brief article, Japanese scientists cage light, The Register reports that scientists working for NTT have used photonic crystals to trap light by over one nanosecond. In fact, light was trapped inside a wavelength-sized micro-cavity, delaying its transmission. So the apparent speed of light was reduced by a factor of 50,000, or just 5.8 kilometers per second. This is not the first time that physicists have 'reduced' the speed of light, but this achievement could lead to new ways of storing information in future light-based or quantum computers. Read more for additional details and a figure showing the photonic crystal used by the NTT researchers."
Software

Submission + - Daylight Savings Time Change

mdirish writes: The U.S. Government has mandated changes to Daylight Saving Time (DST) for 2007. Beginning in the spring of 2007, DST start and end dates for the United States will transition to comply with the Energy Policy Act of 2005. In 2007, DST dates in the United States will start three weeks earlier (2 a.m. on the second Sunday in March) and will end one week later (2 a.m. on the first Sunday in November). I've already started to get mail from software vendors about issuing patches to their software. Sysadmins like myself may be inundated with patches and config changes to reflect this change.

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