Submission + - The DEPSECDEF's report (foreignaffairs.com)
toppromulan writes: New article by William J. Lynn III (the DEPSECDEF) about a security breach in 2008. The virus spread from an infected USB thumb drive.
Comment Re:if the bat is on the tank... (Score 1) 422
Good point there. My first thought was I hope it was a real bat and not a replica full of bomb or something.
Comment Re:Must be a slow news day.. (Score 1) 376
> why is 1234567890 such a special timestamp?
I would tender that because 1234567890 is ten times 0123456789. We're surrounded by decimal representations of number. Fascinating.
Comment Re:Perl script is unnecessary (Score 1) 376
Go the full shebang and use my handy utility for observing, especially with bash -x mode:
http://github.com/topromulan/12345/tree/master
Comment In English (Score 3, Informative) 156
Comment You cannot learn Kung Fu from a book! (Score 1) 253
You must learn by do chores for Mister Miagi!
Distributed "Nuclear Batteries" the New Infrastructure Answer? 611
thepacketmaster writes "The Star reports about a new power generation model using smaller distributed power generators located closer to the consumer. This saves money on power generation lines and creates an infrastructure that can be more easily expanded with smaller incremental steps, compared to bigger centralized power generation projects. The generators in line for this are green sources, but Hyperion Power Generation, NuScale, Adams Atomic Engines (and some other companies) are offering small nuclear reactors to plug into this type of infrastructure. The generator from Hyperion is about the size of a garden shed, and uses older technology that is not capable of creating nuclear warheads, and supposedly self-regulating so it won't go critical. They envision burying reactors near the consumers for 5-10 years, digging them back up and recycling them. Since they are so low maintenance and self-contained, they are calling them nuclear batteries."
Comment Wyoming scale? (Score 1) 877
540 million tons is already a half a billion. 1000 times it would be a half a trillion.
Comment Why isn't it NSCDC.OFR rather than .OFZ? (Score 1) 222
Why isn't it NSCDC.OFR rather than .OFZ?
It also seems odd that the Y=W instead of X=W.
So I tried coded.htx and .htz but no page found, I guess they just silently log how cool you are.
Of course my computations may be off. I think I started drinking a little too early this morning.
Comment chores around house (Score 1) 403
I was considering getting my wife one of these to hang over the kitchen entry to remind her of her to-do list items during the day.
Of course, I might ssh in and display I LOVE YOU randomly as well.
Ultimately I decided it was not a good Christmas present, as if a hint to do more chores.
But, maybe randomly next month!
Comment Look for a good company with internal opps (Score 1) 613
I had similar issues, for more years.
I can tell you what I did.
I got on in the support department of a company that I could tell actually had more going on in the same headquarters than just a call center, and eventually applied successfully into another department after working there a year or so.
Good luck.
Submission + - TCP half-open saves the Internet, the Earth (wikipedia.org)
Top Romulan writes: "Today, in Intergalactic Headlines, as the planet Earth prepares for an oncoming fictional black hole which will slowly compact the entire planet Earth around it, shines a ray of hope on the last remaining moments of Internet connectivity and the human understanding of what is happening.
As physical layer transmission mediums become subject to the fictional element dubbed black hole BH sub LHC1, the link layer will behave in an undefined manner and higher-level protocols may be affected.
In particular, Transmission Control Protocol, the very basis by which many Slashdot readers share and absorb, may be affected in the following way. If one end of the connection disappears into the fictional entity BH sub LHC1, then your TCP connection state will be known as half-open.
This corrects a common misconception, which can be understood thoroughly by viewing the latest wikipedia article on the subject, and its See Also section and history."
