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Data Storage

Hard Drive Reliability Study Flawed? 237

storagedude writes "A recent study of hard drive reliability by Backblaze was deeply flawed, according to Henry Newman, a longtime HPC storage consultant. Writing in Enterprise Storage Forum, Newman notes that the tested Seagate drives that had a high failure rate were either very old or had known issues. The study also failed to address manufacturer's specifications, drive burn-in and data reliability, among other issues. 'The oldest drive in the list is the Seagate Barracuda 1.5 TB drive from 2006. A drive that is almost 8 years old! Since it is well known in study after study that disk drives last about 5 years and no other drive is that old, I find it pretty disingenuous to leave out that information. Add to this that the Seagate 1.5 TB has a well-known problem that Seagate publicly admitted to, it is no surprise that these old drives are failing.'"
Encryption

Scientists Extract RSA Key From GnuPG Using Sound of CPU 264

kthreadd writes "In their research paper titled RSA Key Extraction via Low-Bandwidth Acoustic Cryptanalysis, Daniel Genkin, Adi Shamir and Eran Tromer et al. present a method for extracting decryption keys from the GnuPG security suite using an interesting side-channel attack. By analysing the acoustic sound made by the CPU they were able to extract a 4096-bit RSA key in about an hour (PDF). A modern mobile phone placed next to the computer is sufficient to carry out the attack, but up to four meters have been successfully tested using specially designed microphones."

Comment Re: meeses (Score 1) 361

Mostly correct, with lomoco you get only the following CPI choices: 400, 800, 1200 and 1600 (as of my old 2005 version). The +/- buttons do change DPI on-the-fly, and with Xorg (and others), you can map the buttons.

For example, in Open Arena I map the back-button to zoom. (And the back/forward buttons work while web browsing, etc.)

With Linux, there is no over-arching driver that "knows" you are running game X and changes the key mapping, while game Y has a separate mapping. One would need to run a tiny script when launching the game or set the keys in-game.

Comment Re: meeses (Score 1) 361

$ man lomoco

NAME
              lomoco - Logitech Mouse Control for USB Mice

SYNOPSIS
              lomoco [OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION
                lomoco can configure vendor-specific options on Logitech USB mice (or dual-personality mice plugged into
              the USB port). A number of recent devices are supported. The program is mostly useful in setting the
              resolution to 800 cpi or higher on mice that boot at 400 cpi (such as the MX500, MX510, MX1000 etc.), and
              disabling SmartScroll or Cruise Control for those who would rather use the two extra buttons as ordinary
              mouse buttons.

              Hint 1: use a Linux kernel with Event Interface support (the evdev module) if you want full access to the
              numerous buttons on these mice.

              Hint 2: on Linux, the usbmouse driver ignores the extra buttons altogether. Don't let it handle your
              Logitech mice -- use the generic hid driver for USB HID devices instead.

Comment Re:Other Motives (Score 2) 275

Most large/corporate installs of Windows manage updates via server-determined policies, not by individual users.

One would assume LiMux is managed the same way: an IT team is constantly pushing out updates to their 14,800 desktops. If they made their own distribution, they probably manage their own auto-updates.

Comment Re:Use Google-like monopolies to your advantage (Score 4, Informative) 174

You can easily run ghostery, request policy, refcontrol, noscript, https everywhere, cookie monster, and BetterPrivacy all at the same time.

How does anyone browse without these? I setup all of those, except request policy and noscript, for every user I help. They're nearly all passive.

Comment Re:ABANDON SHIP (Score 3, Informative) 278

How about:
  - TabKit (tabs on the side, how does anyone browse without this?!!)
  - FoxyProxy
  - NoScript (it's not the same on Chrome)
  - Redirector
  - Screen Capture Elite
  - HTML Validator
  - Refcontrol (blocks/fakes referrer header)
  - Better Privacy (flash cookie blocker/sanitizer)

The list goes on...

Comment Re:ABANDON SHIP (Score 3, Informative) 278

You obviously do not use, nor rely on, extensions. Extensions for Chrome/Chromium pale in comparison to what extensions for Firefox can do.

Want tabs on the side? Good luck with Chrome. Good luck with alternate Webkit browsers with not enough marketshare to attract extensions.

Simple things like holding control (and optionally shift!) to select cell values or entire columns in a table are what set Firefox apart from other browsers.

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