Comment IAALBNYL (Score 1) 213
I need to steal that acronym.
Submission + - Converting a Website to a Wiki
CedgeS writes: I administer a website with a few thousand pages and images. I'd like to convert it into a wiki, mostly for the benefits of revision history and easy editing. The task seems fairly straightforward: make a list of which filename will have which article name, convert as much of the html as possible to wiki markups (especially links and images), strip out php/ssi includes for headers and footers, and toss it all into a wiki. Sharing your knowledge of existing software and migration experiences would be a great help to me and to others attempting the same feat in the future.
Submission + - New E-Discovery Rules Benefit Some Firms
mikesd81 writes: "The Associated Press writes about companies that help businesses track and search their e-mails and other electronic data are experiencing a surge of interest in the wake of federal rule changes that clarify requirements to produce such evidence in lawsuits. From the article: "The new rules, which took effect Friday, require U.S. companies to keep better track of their employees' e-mails, instant messages and other electronic documents in the event the companies are sued, legal experts say. They are part of amendments to federal rules governing civil litigation and were approved by the Supreme Court's administrative arm in April after a five-year review."
Companies and other parties involved in federal litigation must now produce "electronically stored information" as part of discovery. Federal and state courts have increasingly been requiring the production of such evidence in individual cases, and the new rules clarify that the data will be required in federal lawsuits. Also, under the new rules, an information technology employee who routinely copies over a backup computer tape could be committing "virtual shredding" once a lawsuit has been filed, said Alvin F. Lindsay, a partner at Hogan & Hartson LLP and expert on technology and litigation."
Companies and other parties involved in federal litigation must now produce "electronically stored information" as part of discovery. Federal and state courts have increasingly been requiring the production of such evidence in individual cases, and the new rules clarify that the data will be required in federal lawsuits. Also, under the new rules, an information technology employee who routinely copies over a backup computer tape could be committing "virtual shredding" once a lawsuit has been filed, said Alvin F. Lindsay, a partner at Hogan & Hartson LLP and expert on technology and litigation."
Submission + - Sign the petition to ban DRM in the UK
Thyrus writes: In the UK APIG has performed a public inquiry into the use of DRM which has recommended clearly labelling DRM infected products (among other recommendations). We want the government to go one step further and ban the use of DRM in digital content. We believe DRM removes the freedom of choice between competing products and locks users into using a particular service. We do not believe that digital content should be cost free, but it should be provided in such a way that a person who has purchased a copy of it has control over that copy.
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/bandrm/
Submission + - OSDL Lays Off Entire Engineering Staff
An anonymous reader writes: From a colleague of a colleague of a colleague:
OSDL just laid off their *entire* engineering staff this morning. No warning. It's a ghost town in the building now. Smells of some really nasty board-level politics, but information is not exactly plentiful.
All OSDL hosting is frozen — no more new projects effective immediately. The infrastructure staff has been reduced to a single person (who also has to manage the in-house LAN and desktop support). I get the feeling OSDL is going to be encouraging projects hosted here to go elsewhere. The one remaining infra staff was already talking to management about what systems in the lab could be shut down to save on the power bill.
OSDL just laid off their *entire* engineering staff this morning. No warning. It's a ghost town in the building now. Smells of some really nasty board-level politics, but information is not exactly plentiful.
All OSDL hosting is frozen — no more new projects effective immediately. The infrastructure staff has been reduced to a single person (who also has to manage the in-house LAN and desktop support). I get the feeling OSDL is going to be encouraging projects hosted here to go elsewhere. The one remaining infra staff was already talking to management about what systems in the lab could be shut down to save on the power bill.
Submission + - Federal Agency releases network security LiveCD
An anonymous reader writes: Heise news reports that the german "Federal Agency For Security In Information Technology" (BSI) has released the second version of it's network secruity LiveCD for download. The "BSI Opensource Security Suite (BOSS)" includes a bootable Linux LiveCD and includes among others Nessus, Ethereal, Nmap, chkrootkit and some guidance about how to use the LiveCD to test your local network for security issues.
Submission + - OpenDocument now published ISO standard
Submission + - Stallman Absolves Novell
bubulubugoth writes: "There been a lot of fuss about Novell and Microsoft deal, but suddenly silence. We like bad news, we get a lot of coverage about Ballmer's and Stallman's view of the deal. Now, Stallman and Moglen "absolves" Novell and Microsoft, but yet again confirm their intention to close the loophole at GLPv2 used by Novell and Microsoft lawyers.
Interesting reading."
Submission + - Opening Statements Begin in Microsoft-Iowa Case
cc writes: The Des Moines Register is reporting that opening statements have started in the Microsoft-Iowa antitrust case. The Des Register reports that the Plaintiffs have shaped their case around nine stories involving competitors from IBM to Linux. Microsoft attorneys say Gates is expected to testify in January, and company CEO Steve Ballmer will likely appear in February. Both men are expected to be on the stand for about four days. Unlike previous antitrust cases against the software giant, the Iowa case is seeking additional damages for security vulnerabilities. Plaintiffs allege that Microsoft's bundling of IE with Windows caused harm to consumers by increasing the consumer's susceptibility to security breaches and bugs. The case is one of the largest antitrust cases in history, encompassing millions of documents and Microsoft's business practices during the last 20 years.
Submission + - Google Checkout suffers failures, goes offline
An anonymous Google Checkout seller writes: I'm quite surprised that this hasn't been picked up by the media yet, but over the last 4 days, Google Checkout has been crippled to the point of complete failure on three occasions, most recently between 10:30am to 1pm today. What this means for sellers is that during these time periods, Google Checkout was generally unable to accept transactions, with few exceptions.
I'm a relatively high-volume Google Checkout user, and you can see during these time periods that orders just completely stop coming in. Users attempting to purchase and sometimes even sellers attempting to access their account get redirected to this error page. Like many sellers, this has cost me substantial amounts of money this week, and on top of it all, most of us are paying for Adwords at the same time Google Checkout is down, so not only are we losing revenue, we're actually paying Google to send us customers who can't make purchases because their system is down.
On top of all of this, Google Checkout offers no phone support, and it takes the better part of a day for their email support to get back to you. They do acknowledge that the system is having difficulties and say that their engineers are working on the issue. Well, that was Monday. It's Friday and not only was the service offline today, but many sellers (such as myself) have orders backed up in the system for hours, and in some cases for over 48 hours. This means that in some situations, orders placed 2 days ago have not yet been processed by Google, and remain in one of several pre-charged states of "Reviewing", "Chargable" or "Charging".
It never even occured to me when switching from Paypal to Google Checkout that the service could be this broken. Google does everything so well, so one must ask himself, how does a company like Google screw up something like this so badly?
I'm a relatively high-volume Google Checkout user, and you can see during these time periods that orders just completely stop coming in. Users attempting to purchase and sometimes even sellers attempting to access their account get redirected to this error page. Like many sellers, this has cost me substantial amounts of money this week, and on top of it all, most of us are paying for Adwords at the same time Google Checkout is down, so not only are we losing revenue, we're actually paying Google to send us customers who can't make purchases because their system is down.
On top of all of this, Google Checkout offers no phone support, and it takes the better part of a day for their email support to get back to you. They do acknowledge that the system is having difficulties and say that their engineers are working on the issue. Well, that was Monday. It's Friday and not only was the service offline today, but many sellers (such as myself) have orders backed up in the system for hours, and in some cases for over 48 hours. This means that in some situations, orders placed 2 days ago have not yet been processed by Google, and remain in one of several pre-charged states of "Reviewing", "Chargable" or "Charging".
It never even occured to me when switching from Paypal to Google Checkout that the service could be this broken. Google does everything so well, so one must ask himself, how does a company like Google screw up something like this so badly?
