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Comment Re:Or just maybe... (Score 1) 798

That's what happened to me! After installing Natty I tried and tried and tried to get used to Unity, but it always seemed to be in my way. After a couple of months I noticed that I had starting doing 90% of my work on my Windows workstation rather than my Linux workstation (they sit side-by-side on my desk). That's when I switched to Mint and have been happily back on Linux ever since.

Comment Re:Of course... (Score 5, Insightful) 486

No. You have a DOCTOR cut it out. The question here is whether or not most ISP's are competent in determining what really is bot activity. A bunch of false positives will be miserable -- as will having to prove to some first-tier customer support person that your system is not infected (as in never was) or that it is actually cleaned and should be allowed back online.

And pity the person that has their ISP connection blocked that uses voice over IP to call customer support. If the ISP blocks the MODEM life is going to be interesting.

Oh, and you won't need to look up that phone number, will you?

Overall, getting infected systems of the net is a wonderful idea, but one that could be a complete mess if done poorly.

Government

State of Virginia Technology Centers Down 190

bswooden writes "Some rather important departments (DMV, Social Services, Taxation) in the state of Virginia are currently without access to documents and information as a technology meltdown has caused much of their infrastructure to be offline for over 24 hours now. State CIO Sam Nixon said, 'A failure occurred in one memory card in what is known as a "storage area network," or SAN, at Virginia's Information Technologies Agency (VITA) suburban Richmond computing center, one of several data storage systems across Virginia.' How does the IT for some of the largest departments in a state come to a screeching halt over a single memory card? Oh, and also, the state is paying Northrup Grumman $2.4 billion over 10 years to manage the state's IT infrastructure." Reader miller60 adds, "Virginia's IT systems drew scrutiny last fall when state agencies reported rolling outages due to the lack of network redundancy."

Comment Re:Get ready to Bend over America (Score 1) 410

In your example the towing company partners with AAA (so AAA directs customers to them) and the towing company guarantees quick service.

Up to now on the net the idea has been that all packets are delivered by your ISP to you as quickly as possible. The new model will be about throttling/delaying packets from companies that don't pay up.

It's as if AAA partnered with the towing company to get normal service for their customers, and in return the towing company would agree to show up late for everyone else.

Note also that Google already pays for all it's bandwidth to the net. You also pay for your bandwidth. Verizon is just acting to extract an extra tariff. Google is partnering with them to keep potential startups (without money to pay for normal service) in the slow lane so that they are unable to ever compete with Google's services.

This is evil through-and-through.

Comment Re:The first planned spam... (Score 5, Insightful) 397

"Whooosh" is a good summary of the whole article... does anyone actual read the articles that get submitted?

HP is NOT going to spam printers.

HP is planning to partner with Yahoo so that you can subscribe to content that would automatically be printed out for you. In other words, the idea is that you can wake up, grab your morning paper off the printer, and sit down to read it with your cup of coffee. The ads IN THE PAPER would be targeted using geolocation from the IP address of your printer so that you would get locally appropriate ads. No ads for department stores that don't exist within a hundred miles of you. Those are the ads they're talking about. Not spam!

On the other hand... the idea of printing off your morning paper may have made sense in the science fiction of the 1950's, but HP is crazy if they think people actually want to print out content that they are going to read once and recycle.

Comment Re:Make (Score 5, Interesting) 327

Wow... I'm going to disagree with you in a big way. The current issue (Make 22) has an in-depth article on converting your lawnmower to RC control. Circuit boards, wiring, assembly... it's a big project but with LOTS of good info to get you there. NOT an overview or a news article. The same is true for the article on hacking wireless power outlets. Then there is the Arduino-powered tweeting cat toy. The physics and construction of double pendulums. How about a sun tracker for solar projects?

There's a ridiculous amount of great material in that single issue! Not news articles but full, in-depth how-to's. There are some light mods (to borrow your phrase) as well, but many of the projects require a significant investment of time and energy.

I think Make is a great source for projects. No dumbing down that I see, at least not in the latest issue!

Data Storage

WD, Intel, Corsair, Kingston, Plextor SSDs Collide 56

J. Dzhugashvili writes "New SSDs just keep coming out from all corners of the market, and keeping track of all of them isn't the easiest job in the world. Good thing SSD roundups pop up every once in a while. This time, Western Digital's recently launched SiliconEdge Blue solid-state drive has been compared against new entrants from Corsair, Kingston, and Plextor. The newcomers faced off against not just each other, but also Intel's famous X25-M G2, WD's new VelociRaptor VR200M mechanical hard drive, and a plain-old WD Caviar Black 2TB thrown in for good measure. Who came out on top? Priced at about the same level, the WD and Plextor drives each seem to have deal-breaking performance weaknesses. The Kingston drive is more affordable than the rest, but it yielded poor IOMeter results. In the end, the winner appeared to be Corsair's Nova V128, which had similar all-around performance as Intel's 160GB X25-M G2 but with a slightly lower capacity and a more attractive price." Thanks to that summary, you might not need to wade through all 10 of the pages into which the linked article's been split.

Comment Re:RTP, NC has one too (Score 1) 36

I'm a member at TechShop RDU as well. It's going through some growing pains, but I'm hoping the model works. The laser is definitely the most popular tool, with the ShopBot probably being second. I was able to knock out a retro-styled cocktail table for my living room in short order on it.

I'm also one of the folks building 3D printers. The group of us are building about 10 printers -- some of us to keep, some to sell to defray our costs, and maybe one or two to stay at TechShop. The original (purchased) 3D printer is a monster -- a Dimension dual-extrusion system.

TS RDU is currently closed for a move to a new location. Looks like it will be open again for anyone interested in the Triangle area sometime in May.

Windows

Submission + - Windows 7 service pack leaked to torrent sites (techworld.com) 1

superapecommando writes: An early build of Windows 7's first service pack has been leaked, leading to thousands of downloads on a whole host of various torrent websites.
As with every Windows operating system (OS) release, improvements and fixes often arrive in the form of a service pack, and only last month the Windows team discussed the upcoming Windows 7 SP1 release in a blog post. The team detailed that the first service pack would feature a number of minor updates for the popular OS. However, it is worth noting that the Windows team did not mention a final release date for the completed service pack.

Comment Re:Donald Knuth (Score 1) 737

It depends on the IT "consultant".

As an IT consultant, I go in and actually build systems. Then again, I've seen the kind of consultant you mention: all "recommendations" and buzzwords for someone else to implement.

If the latter is all you have encountered, I'd suggest you take a different approach to hiring consultants.

Earth

Officials Sue Couple Who Removed Their Lawn 819

Hugh Pickens writes "The LA Times reports that Orange County officials are locked in a legal battle with a couple accused of violating city ordinances for replacing the grass on their lawn with wood chips and drought-tolerant plants, reducing their water usage from 299,221 gallons in 2007 to 58,348 gallons in 2009. The dispute began two years ago, when Quan and Angelina Ha tore out the grass in their front yard. In drought-plagued Southern California, the couple said, the lush grass had been soaking up tens of thousands of gallons of water — and hundreds of dollars — each year. 'We've got a newborn, so we want to start worrying about her future,' said Quan Ha, an information technology manager for Kelley Blue Book. But city officials told the Has they were violating several city laws that require that 40% of residential yards to be landscaped predominantly with live plants. Last summer, the couple tried to appease the city by building a fence around the yard and planting drought-tolerant greenery — lavender, rosemary, horsetail, and pittosporum, among others. But according to the city, their landscaping still did not comply with city standards. At the end of January, the Has received a letter saying they had been charged with a misdemeanor violation and must appear in court. The couple could face a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for their grass-free, eco-friendly landscaping scheme. 'It's just funny that we pay our taxes to the city and the city is now prosecuting us with our own money,' says Quan Ha."
Image

Facebook Master Password Was "Chuck Norris" 319

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A Facebook employee has given a tell-all interview with some very interesting things about Facebook's internals. Especially interesting are all the things relating to Facebook privacy. Basically, you don't have any. Nearly everything you've ever done on the site is recorded into a database. While they fire employees for snooping, more than a few have done it. There's an internal system to let them log into anyone's profile, though they have to be able to defend their reason for doing so. And they used to have a master password that could log into any Facebook profile: 'Chuck Norris.' Bruce Schneier might be jealous of that one."

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