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Security

Auditors Question TSA's Tech Spending, Security Solutions 239

Posted by Soulskill from the taxpayer-funded-fondlecrats dept.
Frosty P writes "Government auditors have faulted the TSA and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, for failing to properly test and evaluate technology before spending money on it. The TSA spent about $36 million on devices that puffed air on travelers to 'sniff' them out for explosives residue. All 207 of those machines ended up in warehouses, abandoned as unable to perform as advertised, deployed in many airports before the TSA had fully tested them. Since it was founded in 2001, the TSA has spent roughly $14 billion in more than 20,900 transactions with dozens of contractors, including $8 billion for the famous new body scanners that have recently come under scrutiny for being unable to perform the task for which they are advertised. 'TSA has an obsession of finding a single box that will solve all its problems. They've spent and wasted money looking for that one box, and there is no such solution,' said John Huey, an airport security expert."

Comment Lateral moves are sometimes the way to go (Score 1) 783

by kashani (#29893643) Attached to: Moving Away From the IT Field?

I tend to get bored if I stay in the same job too long. Also cash, promotions, and respect are easier to come by when you switch companies. Sad, but true. My progression has been tech support, NOC, Network Engineer, Windows Admin, Network Eng/Sys Admin, Sys Admin/DBA/Network/Developer/IT guy, Application Operations, and finally head Application Engineer which is mostly capacity planning, architecture review, project management, and trying to catch issues before they take the service down. Most of what you learn at one job can be applied at another job. At the very least you'll be that Sys Admin that actually understands routing or the DBA that doesn't blame the network first.

None of the moving around has retarded my career and I'm somewhat sought after these days because I'm a generalist with a 14 years of experience as well as workign at five startups. Moving around like that might not work for everyone, but I recommend it if you're bored to tears with your current bailiwick and actually like the IT field overall.

kashani
Networking

Cable Companies Want Bigger Share of Online TV Market 175

Posted by Soulskill from the boobtube-in-the-intertubes dept.
commodore64_love writes with news that a number of cable companies, such as Time-Warner, Comcast, and Cox, are trying to establish themselves as content providers on the web in addition to television. They are currently negotiating with HBO, TNT, CNN, and a number of other channels to bring their programming online exclusively for cable TV subscribers. They say they're not trying to develop "some enormous new revenue opportunity," but rather trying to compete with sites like Hulu, which provide shows for free. "They pay networks a per-subscriber fee each month for the right to carry channels. But the cable companies have groused that they are paying for content that programmers are giving away for free on the Web. ... People aren't yet cutting the cord en masse - the Leichtman survey found that people who watch recent TV shows online every week are not more likely to give up TV service than other people. But the industry is heading off what could end up as a troubling trend. After all, the availability of free content online has befuddled other media industries, from music to newspapers. ... The cable companies and others involved in the talks for a TV service said their goal isn't to kill the online video goose, but to work out a plan that keeps everyone's business intact."
Wine

Apps That Officially Support Wine 354

Posted by kdawson from the insert-alcohol-related-line-here dept.
David Gerard writes "Wine (the Windows not-an-emulator for Unix) runs Windows applications more often than not. (Certainly more often than Vista does.) Dan Kegel on the wine-users mailing list/forum has started gathering apps that declare Wine a supported platform. And there's now a Wine Support Honor Roll page on the Wine wiki. We need more apps that work with Wine stating that they consider it a supported platform. If you write Win32 open source or shareware, please open yourself to the wider market!"
User Journal

Journal Journal: 2004 update, see you next year

Journal by kashani

Hey look I'm a different state... of the union not the mind.

Sobriety stills sucks and Johnny Cash still rocks.

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