zunder1990 - Slashdot User

Submission + - US Offers New Plans 1 Month Before U.N. Meeting to Regulate Web (foxnews.com)

Submitted by Velcroman1 on Thursday November 01, 2012 @01:59PM

Velcroman1 writes: Slashdotters have been reading for months about the upcoming ITU conference next month in Dubai, which will propose new regulations and restrictions for the Internet that critics say could censor free speech, levy tariffs on e-commerce, and even force companies to clean up their “e-waste” and make gadgets that are better for the environment. Concerns about the closed-door event have sparked a Wikileaks-style info-leaking site, and led the State Department on Wednesday to file a series of new proposals or tranches seeking to ensure “competition and commercial agreements — and not regulation” as the meeting's main message. Terry Kramer, the chief U.S. envoy to the conference, says the United States is against sanctions. “[Doing nothing] would not be a terrible outcome at all,” Kramer said recently.

Submission + - Lies We Tell Our CEOs About Database Security (darkreading.com)

Submitted by PLAR on Thursday November 01, 2012 @10:53AM

PLAR writes: Governor Nikki Haley and her non-technical senior executives have tried to dole out a measure of information about the state's data breach and citizen credit remediation through a series of press conferences this week. A good faith effort to be sure, security pundits say, but one whose content may also hint at how South Carolina may have gotten in this mess in the first place. There are lessons here for CEOs and security pros.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Is TSA's PreCheck System Easy to Game? (wordpress.com)

Submitted by OverTheGeicoE on Tuesday October 30, 2012 @01:31PM

OverTheGeicoE writes: TSA has had a preferred traveler program, PreCheck, for a while now. Frequent fliers and other individuals with prior approval from DHS can avoid some minor annoyances of airport security, like removing shoes and light jackets, but not all of the time. TSA likes to be random and unpredictable, so PreCheck participants don't always get the full benefits of PreCheck. Apparently the decision about PreCheck is made when the boarding pass is printed, and a traveler's PreCheck authorization is encoded, unencrypted, on the boarding pass barcode. In theory, one could use a barcode-reading Web site (like this one, perhaps) to translate a barcode into text to determine your screening level before a flight. One might even be able to modify the boarding pass using PhotoShop or the GIMP to, for example, get the screening level of your choice. I haven't been able to verify this information, but I bet Slashdot can. Is TSA's PreCheck system really that easy to game? If you have an old boarding pass lying around, can you read the barcode and verify that the information in TFA is correct?

Submission + - New York Data Centers Battle Floods, Utility Outages (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by miller60 on Tuesday October 30, 2012 @01:13PM

miller60 writes: At least three data center buildings in lower Manhattan are struggling with power problems amid widespread flooding and utility outages caused by Hurricane Sandy. Flooded basements at two sites took out diesel fuel pumps, leaving them unable to refuel generators on higher levels. One of these was Datagram, which knocked out Buzzfeed and the Gawker network of sites. At 111 8th Avenue, some tenants lost power when Equinix briefly experienced generator problems.

Submission + - New Jersey Nuclear Power Plant on 'Alert' Due to Hurricane Sandy (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 30, 2012 @01:13PM

An anonymous reader writes: Last night Exelon Corp.declared an “alert” at its New Jersey Oyster Creek nuclear power plant as a result of Hurricane Sandy‘s record-breaking storm surge. The alert is the second-lowest level of the four-tier emergency scale established by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and the NRC warns that a further water rise could force the country’s oldest working plant to use emergency water supplies to cool its spent uranium fuel rods to prevent the release of radiation.

Submission + - Outlawed by Amazon DRM (bekkelund.net)

Submitted by

concealment

on Monday October 22, 2012 @02:45PM

concealment writes: "A couple of days a go, my friend Linn sent me an e-mail, being very frustrated: Amazon just closed her account and wiped her Kindle. Without notice. Without explanation. This is DRM at it’s worst.

Linn travels a lot and therefore has, or should I say had, a lot of books on her Kindle, purchased from Amazon. Suddenly, her Kindle was wiped and her account was closed."

Submission + - Amazon Deletes User's Kindle Account (bekkelund.net)

Submitted by lightbox32 on Monday October 22, 2012 @02:26PM

lightbox32 writes: It appears that Amazon is at it again. Not content with the backslash received after deleting the ebook 1984 from user's Kindle, it appears that they have now banned a user from their service, erasing all their Kindle's paid content in the process.

Submission + - NASA achieves data goals for Mars rover with open source software (opensource.com)

Submitted by

caseyb89

on Monday October 22, 2012 @10:57AM

caseyb89 writes: "Open source projects Nginx, Railo CMS, and GlusterFS are powering Mars Curiosity's big data crunching. "Taken together, the combination of cloud and open source enabled the Curiosity mission to provide beautiful images in real time, not months delayed; at high quality, not "good enough" quality. A traditional, proprietary approach would not have been this successful, given the short time to deployment and shifting requirements that necessitated the ultimate in agility and flexibility.""

Submission + - Internet traffic exchange: 2 billion users and it's done on a handshake (oecdinsights.org)

Submitted by

Raindeer

on Monday October 22, 2012 @06:29AM

Raindeer writes: "Every day one Exabyte of data is said to travel over the Internet – enough data to fill 300,000 of the world’s biggest hard disks or 212 million DVDs. And astonishingly, according to Internet Traffic Exchange: Market Developments and Policy Challenges a new OECD report on Internet traffic exchange, most of the thousands of networks that exchange this traffic do so without a written contract or formal agreement.

The report provides evidence that the existing Internet model works extremely well, has boosted growth and competition and brought prices for data down to 100,000 times less than that of a voice minute. A survey of 4300 networks, representing 140,000 direct exchanges of traffic, so called peerings, on the Internet, found that 99.5% of “peering agreements” were on a handshake basis, with no written contract and the exchange of data happening with no money changing hands. Moreover, in many locations, multilateral agreements are in place, using a so-called route server, where hundreds of networks will accept to exchange traffic for free with any network that joins the agreement. The parties to these agreements include not only Internet backbone, access, and content distribution networks, but also universities, NGOs, branches of government, individuals, businesses and enterprises of all sorts – a universality of the constituents of the Internet that extends far beyond the reach of any regulatory body’s influence."

Submission + - IBM: The Cost Difference Is Too Great for business Not to hire H1B (cis.org)

Submitted by sglines on Thursday October 18, 2012 @08:48AM

sglines writes: We all know that BIG business has been abusing H1B visas for a long time. The last time I was in a data center I was the only non-South Asian in the place. It's been hard to document this much less do anything about it. When companies like IBM say they can't find qualified job applicants that's BS and they have finally admitted it here.

Submission + - Replacing Windows 8's Missing Start Menu (itworld.com)

Submitted by

jfruh

on Monday October 08, 2012 @08:36AM

jfruh writes: "The Start Button, which has offered Windows users quick access to important programs, folders, and configuration options since 1995 and has looked more or less the same for all that time, has been re-engineered beyond recognition for Windows 8, replaced by a Start Screen of colorful Metro tiles that greets the user upon startup. One big problem: once you enter Desktop mode to access non-Metro apps, you lose easy access to all the stuff you expect from the Start Button. This has given rise to something of a cottage industry for Start Button replacements, with multiple replacement utilities available even before Windows 8 officially arrives."

Submission + - FCC Chief: 300MHz More Spectrum by 2015 (itworld.com)

Submitted by

itwbennett

on Friday October 05, 2012 @10:03AM

itwbennett writes: "On Thursday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski layed out plans to make 300MHz more spectrum available by 2015. Among the blocks that will be auctioned in the AWS (Advanced Wireless Services) band is a band between 1755MHz and 1780MHz, where a commercial user would share the spectrum with current government users."

Submission + - What would you include in a new building?

Submitted by weiserfireman on Monday October 01, 2012 @10:46AM

weiserfireman writes: For the first time in our company's 60 year history, we are going to be building a new facility from scratch.

We are a CNC Machine shop with 40 employees and 20 CNC machines, crammed into a 12,000 sq foot building. We are going to build a new 30,000 sq foot building.

I am the only IT person. I support all the computer systems, as well as all the fire/security/phone systems. My Boss has asked for my input on what infrastructure to include in the new building to support current and future technology.

1st on my list is a telecommunications equipment room. Our current building doesn't have one.

I have been researching this topic on the Internet, and I have a list of a lot of different things, all of them are nice, but I know I am going to have a limited budget.

If you were in my shoes, what priorities what features would you design into the building?

Submission + - Gas Shortage Could Pop WD's Helium-Drive Plans (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123 on Monday October 01, 2012 @09:34AM

Lucas123 writes: U.S. federal reserves of helium gas are at an all-time low after a 15-year wholesale sell off, which could effect WD's plans to begin manufacturing hard drives filled with the second lightest element. The U.S. reserves, created after WWI, are stored in natural underground rock formations in the Texas Panhandle. Those reserves feed the majority of the world's annual demand of 6.2 billion cubic feet. As supply dwindled, the government had hoped private industry would explore and bring its own sources of helium on line, but that has yet to happen. As a result, the price of helium, which is used in manufacturing semiconductors and cooling super magnets in MRIs and even CERN's Large Hadron Collider, has doubled in the past 10 years.

Submission + - 16 or 64 core Supercomputer project on Kickstarter (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by

kb1cvh

on Friday September 28, 2012 @05:50PM

kb1cvh writes: "This project just launched on kickstarter.
A 16 or 64 core RISC supercomputer.

While not everyone's idea of a supercomputer, it'll certainly be accessible.

$99 pledge for a 16 core board.
If they make $3M in pledges, a pledge over $199 get's you a 64 core board."

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