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Comment Re:Ethical vs Moral (Score 2, Insightful) 785

From a soldier's point of view it is rather easy to understand why all of the population might appear to be an enemy. Often that is an outright fact.

Yeah, that particularly happens when the soldier is part of an invading occupation force with dubious intention. AND the soldier is conditioned to believe they are (racially, religiously, socially) superior to the locals they are "defending". AND they are products of a militarized culture that glorifies violence as it cynically prattles about honor and respect.

Perhaps, just maybe, if foreign policy of oppressors such as the Washington Consensus were attacked and done away with by the people responsible for them (you know, the supposedly "free" people who stand on the sidelines as their killers are loosed on the world), the ethics of creating killing machines more efficient than Special Forces or Airborne soldiers wouldn't be debated by arrested adolescents (who've never smelled the burning flesh of their "enemies") in meaningless online forums.

In such a world, your utter bankruptcy of anything decent would be appropriately pilloried for the imperial apologia it is. I guess, as it stands, you'll just have to settle for my contempt....

Comment Re:Yeah, they could test elsewhere (Score 1) 374

Find a place a majority of the group agree the testing can take place and the rest will get it blocked. The simple matter is that there are times when the "possible" harm to marine life must be acceptable.

So, what say we "test" some DU in the load bearing members of your house to "firm up the foundation" and "protect you from external threat". Even more, let's say you have NO SAY WHATSOEVER in such implementation, because, quite frankly, you don't count as a rational being that anyone should care about (I sure as hell don't care about you.) That sound about right to you?

Privacy

Submission + - House approves warrantless wiretapping.

An anonymous reader writes: The House of Representatives voted 227-183 to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to allow warrantless wiretapping of telephone and electronic communications. The vote extends the FISA amendment for six months. The final vote results are available here.
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - iD and Valve violating GPL

frooge writes: With the recent release of iD's catalog on Steam, it appears DOSBox is being used to run the old DOS games for greater compatibility. According to a post on the Halflife2.net forums, however, this distribution does not contain a copy of the GPL license that DOSBox is distributed under, which violates the license. According to the DOSBox developers, they were not notified that it was being used for this release.
User Journal

Journal SPAM: Will Bush Cancel The 2008 Election? 10

Published on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

Will Bush Cancel The 2008 Election?

by Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis

It is time to think about the unthinkable.

The Bush Administration has both the inclination and the power to cancel the 2008 election.

Networking

Submission + - Bloggers vs. Journalists - Access denied!

An anonymous reader writes: ADC over at the Application Delivery Networking blog had an interesting take on bloggers vs. journalists and why bloggers shouldn't complain when they don't get access from vendors. Her post was a response to a complaint on Mark Evans' blog about why Nortel wouldn't give him access, despite the fact that he's the only blogger that focuses solely on Nortel.

Among other things, ADC says:
"You probably aren't aware of the hierarchy out there amidst the media community. Access to information from vendors is based on your status within the hierarchy. The information a member of the press gets from a vendor is different from what's given to an analyst and is different than what a blogger is going to receive. Bloggers are not journalists and most are certainly not analysts. They can be a channel through which information is disseminated, making them invaluable to the folks in the trenches, true, but they can also be dangerous because they aren't bound by any rules. And that's what you're missing because you've not been a member of the press — you don't "get" the hierarchy and how information is disseminated through the ranks. And guess where bloggers fall? Yup. Stand up straight, there, private!"

It's an interesting take on the role of the blogosphere and their relationships with vendors. As a tech PR guy, I can tell you that ADC hits the nail right on the head about vendors' tenuous relationship with bloggers.

Here's the URL: http://www.theapplicationdeliverynetwork.com/?p=25
Security

Mind How You Walk - Someone is Watching 256

mrbluze writes "The Telegraph has an opinion article about the future of the extensive CCTV network in the United Kingdom. Automated analysis of how and where people are walking or otherwise moving, and what objects they carry or leave behind, flags the attention of security staff. This is meant to preempt a crime and make suspects identifiable even by gait. The technology is of questionable public benefit since street crime has not decreased despite the presence of CCTV. 'An airport camera can be programmed to know what a departure hall should look like, with thousands of separate movements. A single suitcase left for any length of time would trigger an alarm. This technology was developed for use in hotels to alert staff to a breakfast tray left outside a room. Soon, it will be coming to a street near you. Why not go the whole hog and have microphones attached to cameras or embedded in street lights?'"
The Internet

Submission + - R.E.M. and Net Neutrality

cheezitmike writes: The Washington Post reports that several bands, including R.E.M., are joining up to raise public awareness in support of Net Neutrality:

The Future of Music Coalition — an advocacy group of musicians that fought radio consolidation — is assembling a lineup of name bands, such as R.E.M. and Death Cab for Cutie, to join the fight to keep the net neutral. The group will join net neutrality advocate Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) for a teleconference today to kick off the campaign, which is called "Rock the Net ." The campaign will include a petition and a series of concerts. The coalition fears that if companies are allowed to charge for faster access to the Internet, it will hurt the ability of musicians to get their music out to their fans, especially small, indie bands.
Networking

Submission + - Nagios: System and Network Monitoring

David Martinjak writes: "Nagios is an open source application for monitoring hosts, services, and conditions over a network. Availability of daemons and services can be tested, and specific statistics can be checked by Nagios to provide system and network administrators with vital information to help sustain uptime and prevent outages. Nagios: System and Network Monitoring is for everyone who has a network to run.

The book is authored by Wolfgang Barth and published by No Starch Press. The publisher hosts a Web page which contains an online copy of the table of contents, portions of reviews, links to purchase the electronic and print versions of the book, and a sample chapter ("Chapter 7: Testing Local Resources") in PDF format.

An amusing note to begin: this is one of the only books I have read where the introduction was actually worth reading closely. Many books seem to talk about background or history of the subject without providing much pertinent information, if any at all. In Nagios: System and Network Monitoring, Wolfgang Barth begins with a hypothetical anecdote to illustrate the usefulness of Nagios. The most important section in the introduction, however, is the explanation of states in Nagios. While monitoring a resource, Nagios will return of one of four states. OK indicates nominal status, WARNING shows a potentially problematic circumstance, CRITICAL signifies an emergency situation, and UNKNOWN usually means there is an operating error with Nagios or the corresponding plugin. The definitions for each of these states are determined by the person or team who administers Nagios so that relevant thresholds can be set for the WARNING and CRITICAL status levels.

The first chapter walks the reader through installing Nagios to the filesystem. All steps are shown, which proves to be very helpful if you are unfamiliar with unpacking archives or compiling from source. Users who are either new to Linux, or cannot install Nagios through a package manager, will appreciate the verbosity offered here. Fortunately, the level of detail is consistent through the book.

Chapter 2 explains the configuration structure of Nagios to the reader. This chapter may contain the most important material in the book as understanding the layout of Nagios is essential to a successful deployment in any environment. The book moves right into enumerating the uses and purposes of the config files, objects, groupings, and templates. All of this information is valuable and presented in a descriptive manner to help the reader set up a properly configured installation of Nagios. My biggest stumbling block in using Nagios was wrapping my brain around the relationships of the config files and objects. This chapter clears up all of the ambiguities I remember having to work out for myself. If only this book had been around a few years ago!

The sixth chapter dives into the details of plugins that are available for monitoring network services. This chapter explains using the check_icmp plugin to ping both a host and a specific service for verifying reachability. Additional examples include monitoring mail servers, LDAP, web servers, and DNS among others. There is even a section for testing TCP and UDP ports.

Next, the book covers checking the status of local resources on systems. At work, we have a system in production that could have been partitioned better. Unfortunately, /var is a bit smaller than it should be, and tends to fill up relatively frequently. Thankfully, Nagios can trigger a warning when there is a low amount of free space left on the partition. From there, we have Nagios execute a script that cleans out certain items in /var so we don't have to bother with it. We can also receive notification if the situation does not improve, and requires further attention. In addition to monitoring hard drive usage, the book includes examples for checking swap utilization, system load, number of logged-in users, and even Nagios itself.

Chapter 12 discusses the notification system in Nagios. You provide who, what, when, where, and how in the configs, and Nagios does the rest. The book does a fantastic job of explaining what exactly triggers a notification, and how to efficiently configure Nagios to ensure the proper parties are being informed of relevant issues at reasonable intervals. For example, the server team might be interested to know that /var is 90% full on one of the LDAP servers; however they don't need to be notified of this every thirty seconds. This chapter also covers an important aspect of Nagios known as flapping. Flapping occurs when a monitored resource quickly alternates between states. Nagios can be configured for a certain tolerance against rapid alternating changes in states. This means Nagios won't sound the alarm if the problem will resolve itself in a short period of time. Usually flapping is caused by an external factor temporarily influencing the results of the test from Nagios; and therefore has no long-term impact.

The last major chapter to mention here deals with essentially anything and everything about the Nagios Web interface. The main point of interaction between the administrator and Nagios is the fully featured Web interface. This chapter covers recognizing and working on problems, planning downtimes, making configuration changes, and more. I especially like that the book gives an overview of each of the individual CGI programs that the Web interface is composed of; as these files are important for UI customization.

The only aspect of this book that I did not care for was that the book reads like a reference manual at times. The first several chapters start out more conversational in tone with great explanations of the procedures and files; but later it sometimes feels like I am repeatedly reading an iterated piece-by-piece structure, filled in with the content for that chapter. That is not necessarily bad all together as it does provide consistency in the presentation of the information. Additionally, the level of detail is outstanding throughout the book. The explanations are never too short or too long. This is definitely a valuable book for administrators at all levels with fantastic breadth and depth of material. Administrators who are interested in proactive management of their systems and networks should be pleased with Nagios: System and Network Monitoring.

Nagios is licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 2, and can be downloaded from http://nagios.org.

David Martinjak is a programmer, GNU/Linux addict, and the director of 2600 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He can be reached at david.martinjak@gmail.com."
Technology (Apple)

Submission + - Already A Community ready to hack the iPhone

An anonymous reader writes: Less than a week after the iPhone was released, there is already a website that wants to hack it. As it says on the site "Our Goal is to foster a community of Apple iPhone users and developers dedicated to getting the most out of the iPhone. We're on a mission to better the iPhone experience." They also mention that they want to unlock the iPhone so that it can be used on networks other than Cingular, and get to the point where 3rd party applications that are unapproved by Apple can run on the iPhone. I think we've found our "Bad Guys" and only time will tell if they are successful. iFoneResource.com
Security

Submission + - Yahoo! doesn't take phishing seriously

Hans Kwint writes: "Even when trying to report a phishing mail to Yahoo! several times by means of e-mail and calling them several times, the people at Yahoo! don't seem to react, and the mails bounce. Yahoo! doesn't block phishing mails, even though they are technically capable of doing so. Therefore, Yahoo! is guilty of being complicit in case of a successful phishing attempt.

Full story by LXer-member DarenR114"
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - Do today's quiet SFF computers support GNU/Linux?

traderwill writes: I'm an older man who got into the Linux/FOSS "hobby" well into my retirement 10 years ago.
I like it but it's time to upgrade my original desktop tower with a completely new system.
The process has been frustrating because the local stores don't sell Linux systems, and I'm having trouble finding the right answer online. After a week, my questions at the different hardware forums are basically unanswered. I like the modern day SFF computers because they're very quiet and easy to move for long weekends and trips. I just want a computer like that with all the expected ports (USB, Parallel, Card Reader), CD/DVD drive, good sound. Even Linux-supported systems turn out to have no support for onboard sound, etc. Why is this turning out to be an impossible task? Can anyone suggest a model or a Linux-friendly SFF vendor? Whatever it is has to be supported 100% by GNU/Linux/FOSS, of course.
User Journal

Journal Journal: [NFL] A few words about the Indy/Ravens game 3

BWAAAAHAHAHAHA!!

Fuck you Ray Lewis, fuck you Ed Reed, fuck you Terrel Suggs, and last, but certainly not least, FUCK YOU BRIAN BILLICK! I loved that disappointed and sad look instead of that smug one, you arrogant son of a bitch. I hope you get fired.

I kinda felt sorry for McNair, but, hey, he's the one that joined that piece of shit team.

For the record, I root for 2 teams, the Steelers, and whoever plays the Ravens.

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Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?

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