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Submission + - Fuel cells for every family (theatlantic.com)

Submitted by Cuban Devil
Cuban Devil writes: I was about to write to Ask Slashdot asking for opinions about why we still do not have commercial fuel cells in the market yet, the technology is there for a while but never reached the mass market. This week I read two articles — http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/dec2009/gb2009127_746740.htm and http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/wallace-energy — about a Silicon Valley startup which is about to deliver a fuel cell unity capable of sustaining an entire house. The product has many more features than traditional fuel cells, like doing the reverse reaction to store hydrogen or the ability to use different fuels as energy source. Besides helping the poor countries around the world, this technology has the power to change the relationship we have with oil, the implications are too many to be in this post. I hope this could be a real answer for my old question.
Security

Submission + - Password management in distributed networks

Submitted by thetinytoon
thetinytoon writes: As many of the readers, I'm one admin in a team running a network of servers, switches and client computers, with each and every system having some username and password to access the administrative interfaces. For obvious reasons, you don't want to have one combination for them all, but for still being productive, you don't want to look up some obscure 16-digit password in a secure container anytime you need to do something. Password generation rules are mostly so obvious, that you could use one password anyways, and most hardware devices don't allow the use of Challenge/Response-algorithms like OPIE. So I'm asking: how do you solve this dilemma in your networks?
Data Storage

Submission + - SPAM: Professional Online Backup

Submitted by Cuban Devil
Cuban Devil writes: Spending hours copying data to tapes and storing several cubic meters of sensible, magnetic tapes, never had the looks of a clean solution. And what about needing a file and the tape backup simply can`t be read? OK, you will tell me we should do restore tests, etc. We do, but tapes always have its tricks, or the tape drives and robots. In the last years copying everything to a off site storage is becoming a real solution, the datacenters replicate your data among several servers and locations offering, this way, some sort of security. If one agrees to have the data in the hands of another company, two, or more, it is worth the attractive price. What remains unsolved is a way to centralize and manage the backup routines and schedules, I have seen some solutions but none that completely satisfied me in terms of integration with storage services like S3, scheduling, logs, backup and restore control, deduplication, encrypting. Any good advice from slashdotters?
Networking

Submission + - VoIP metrics, network monitoring, and inventory?

Submitted by Cuban Devil
Cuban Devil writes: I'm in a process of choosing a tool to monitor my network and devices, analyzing VoIP calls quality, and building an inventory. I need this tool to be flexible enough to create probes, actions and triggers. I've looked at many tools, some are great for one specific task, but I have not found any with reasonable features for these 3 main needs. The closest match so far is Zenoss Core. By the way, I have no restrictions for paid solutions or to buy it as aservice, I just don't want to spend zillions in something like HP Open View and the entire consulting crew Corporations think necessary to deploy a service like that.

Any recommendations, specially from someone in the VoIP market?

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