Comment what could possibly go wrong (Score 1) 109
The inmates doing time for theft and fraud related offences might just be the same ones who are stealing the computers at your office.
Comment Gartner lacks intelligence (Score 0) 77
The very nature of OpenStack is pretty clear. If you have any questions about "clarity", go download the source code and set it up for yourself and setup your own VPDC.
Comment The problem with Google Glass (Score 4, Insightful) 211
The problem with Google Glass is not the hardware itself, it is the privacy implications of using the device, which sends everything to an untrusted third party. It would be different if they offered the option of never communicating with their network, but they don't offer that as an option. So, essentially anyone who has an agreement with google (NSA, FBI, other governments, other companies, etc) will get copies of your location, pictures coming off the camera, video, microphone data, etc. Those issues alone are the reasons why I would never actually use one. Until Google is serious about separating the umbilical cord from devices like this from talking to their servers, it remains a serious problem about ever using it for anything long term. It's bad enough you might be already using an Android or iPhone device which does almost the same thing, minus the video and audio stream.
Comment slippery slope (Score 2) 348
It starts out protecting the children, then it moves to protecting content authors. Then it moves to protecting government officials from negative political speech. Then it moves to protecting criminals from journalists reporting about their actions. Where does it end? You might as well just take down the internet and block everything.
Comment The bigger question (Score 1) 99
Is why does LexisNexis, which has been around since at least the 1970's, trust the use of Microsoft Windows to their server infrastructure. Sounds like they really dropped the ball here. Hopefully heads will roll on this one.
Comment fork() vs epoll() (Score 5, Informative) 303
I think when Nginx first came on the scene (a little bit after libevent was released), Apache had known about the scalability problems associated with using fork() versus epoll(). This was almost a decade ago. Apache has yet to provide a scalable implementation using epoll similar to what Nginx provides. Its at least a 10x speed improvement on the same hardware.
All that I can say is that all new installations over the past I'd say about 5 years, I've been doing using Nginx only because Apache just can't scale well with their fork() implementation compared to Nginx. I'd say this has something to do with people leaving Apache, at least all the people I know.
All that I can say is that all new installations over the past I'd say about 5 years, I've been doing using Nginx only because Apache just can't scale well with their fork() implementation compared to Nginx. I'd say this has something to do with people leaving Apache, at least all the people I know.
Microsoft Will Squeeze Datacenters On Price of Windows Server 274
Nerval's Lobster writes "Microsoft plans to raise the price of the Datacenter edition of the upcoming R2 release of Windows Server 2012 by 28 percent, adding to what analysts call a record number of price increases for enterprise software products from Redmond. According to licensing data sheets available for download from the Windows Server 2012 R2 Website (PDF), the price of a single license of Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter will be $6,155, compared to $4,809 today—plus the cost of a Client Access Licenses for every user or device connecting to the server. News of the increase was posted yesterday by datacenter virtualization and security specialist Aidan Finn, a six-time Microsoft MVP who works for Dublin-based value added reseller MicroWarehouse Ltd. and has done work for clients including Amdahl, Fujitsu and Barclays. The increase caps off a year filled with a record number of price increases for Microsoft enterprise software, according to a Tweet yesterday from Microsoft software licensing analyst Paul DeGroot of Pica Communications."
Obama on Surveillance: "We Can and Must Be More Transparent" 537
Today President Obama held a press conference to address the situation surrounding the NSA's surveillance activities. (Here is the full transcript.) He announced four actions the administration is undertaking to restore the public's confidence in the intelligence community. Obama plans to work with Congress to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to give greater weight to civil liberties, and to revisit section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, which is the section that allowed bulk collection of phone records. (Of course, "will work with Congress" is a vague term, and Congress isn't known for getting things done lately. Thus, it remains to be seen if anything substantive happens.) Obama is ordering the Dept. of Justice to make public their legal rationale for data collection, and there will be a new NSA official dedicated to transparency efforts. There will also be a new website for citizens to learn about transparency in intelligence agencies. Lastly, a group of outside experts will be convened to review the government's surveillance capabilities. Their job will include figuring out how to maintain the public's trust and prevent abuse, and to consider how the intelligence community's actions will affect foreign policy. In addition to these initiatives, President Obama made his position very clear about several different aspects of this controversy. While acknowledging that "we have significant capabilities," he said, "America is not interested in spying on ordinary people." He added that the people who have raised concerns about privacy and government overreach in a lawful manner are "patriots." This is in stark contrast to his view of leakers like Edward Snowden: "I don't think Mr. Snowden was a patriot." (For his part, Snowden says the recent shut down of encrypted email services is 'inspiring.') When asked about how his opinion of the surveillance programs have changed, he said his perception of them has not evolved since the story broke worldwide. "What you're not seeing is people actually abusing these programs." Obama also endorsed finding technological solutions that will protect privacy regardless of what government agencies want to do.
Comment NSA owned netblocks (Score 5, Informative) 341
Looks like the NSA is up to their old dirty tricks: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/researchers-say-tor-targeted-malware-phoned-home-to-nsa/ ... And yes, I second the motion to stop using Windows -- its full of zero day bugs like this. Not a day goes by where you don't hear about a new zero day attack focused on Windows, and its been that way for decades.
Comment slippery slope (Score 1) 239
This is the slippery slope that I mentioned earlier in a post about the UK censorship of websites deemed to have "adult" content. First, it starts with websites that have "adult" content, then the censorship goes into many other types including bad words, anti-government or subversive content, anti-semitism content, political opponents speech, etc. Then it gets to a point where it will serach and replace on bad content and change it to good content or remove just the posts themselves so no one can see them. Once you have a content filter in place, its extremely easy to make it turn into the Great Firewall of China within a few months or years. This is why these things are just so damaging to the citizens of any country, especially ones that are founded on democratic principles. It doesn't make you more free, it takes away freedom. The bottom line is that when you pay for a pipe, you should get that pipe, not a pipe that has been changed or restricted in any way. To do so is censorship.
Comment Re:Time to create a truely secure chat client (Score 1) 275
its called ssh, it was written in 1990.
Comment TOS does not trump state or federal law (Score 1) 275
All the idiots who think that "Terms of Service" "agreements" -- which for the most part have been proven to be unenforceable in a court of law, trump state or federal law are wrong. An illegal contract is still illegal. For example, craigslist.org has some pretty nefarious nonsense all over thier terms of use web page, and about 90% of it is unenforceable illegal contract nonsense that and they would get, and have gotten laughed out of every court they every attempted to show it to. TOS agreements are no more than a scare tactic used by corporations to make people think its illegal to do something. If your feeble minded enough to believe it, thats you're low IQ that you need to examine.
I personally hope that Skype and Microsoft get sued into oblivion for their misdeeds against the millions of people who have paid to use that Skype program over the years and now after Micro$oft bought it, have since become bamboozled into various levels of fraud by Micor$oft.
Twitter, Hotmail, LinkedIn, Yahoo Open To Hijacking 50
mask.of.sanity writes "Twitter, Linkedin, Yahoo! and Hotmail accounts are open to hijacking thanks to a flaw that allows cookies to be stolen and reused. Attackers need to intercept cookies while the user is logged into the service because the cookies expire on log-out (except LinkedIn, which keeps cookies for three months). The server will still consider them valid. For the Twitter attack, you need to grab the auth_token string and insert it into your local Twitter cookies. Reload Twitter, and you'll be logged in as your target (video here). Not even password changes will kick you out."
Comment with all the past empty threats (Score 2) 727
For over 50 years the propaganda war machine has been putting out highly inflamed offensive speech declaring war on various entities, so really at this point until they actually fire that first missile, I wouldn't worry about it. And when they do actually fire that missile, they will be wiped off the map.
Copyright Trolls Sue Bloggers, Defense Lawyers 219
davecb writes "Prenda Law has commenced three defamation, libel and conspiracy suits against: defense lawyers, defendants and all the blogger and commentators at 'Die Troll Die' and 'Fight Copyright Trolls'. The suits, in different state courts, each attempt to identify anyone who has criticized Prenda, fine them $200,000 each for stating their opinions, and prohibit them from ever criticizing Prenda again."
