Comment Re:Time for Eugenics (Score 4, Insightful) 473
Can I please say from anyone with two shreds of compassion for their fellow humans...
Fuck.
You.
Fuck.
You.
Comment Re:One Step Further (Score 1) 234
Submission + - In Case of Death, Disclose Passwords
cdoggyd writes: Last year, a man, who kept his address book strictly online, died without telling anyone his passwords. This caused problems for his daughter when she tried to notify his contacts. I remember discussion of a "death clock" system that required user interaction at specific intervals to prevent it from disclosing information like passwords. This would have solved the problem for Mr. Talcott's daughter. Does anyone have the actual name and additional information on this system?
Submission + - How to get the police to reopen an investigation (mayzhou.com)
evangellydonut writes: January 15th, the body of an MIT BSEE, Stanford Ph.D. candidate, May Zhou, was found in the truck of her car by Santa Rosa police. Officials declared it a suicide but all her friends and family did not believe this finding. After 4 months, the family had the second autopsy performed, which showed "multiple sites of trauma discovered on the body, such as about the head and extremities." Santa Rosa police refuse to review the evidence and reopen the case, so now the family has to pay for lawyers and P.I.s to look into the case. Is there some way to force the police to reopen the case? Is there action that can be taken against the city of Santa Rosa for criminal negligence?
Submission + - Network Engineer's All Purpose Kit 1
El Torico writes: I've accepted a Network Field Engineer job that will take me to a few unusual and unpleasant places where it may be difficult to purchase tools and equipment. Unfortunately, there are a lot of vague answers on the part of my new employer to my questions, and I don't have any contacts who are on-site. What tools, equipment, supplies, and software should I take? Is there anything else that may be useful to take?
Submission + - Wii Opened For Development
kiwipom writes: "The BBC is reporting that Nintendo are opening up the Wii to developers to produce their own games.
"Home and independent game makers are getting a chance to put together titles for Nintendo's Wii console. The hi-tech firm has released a set of game-making tools called WiiWare that give budding game makers the data they need to use the console and its innovative controller.
Do Slashdotters think this will drive a decent selection of games for the Wii driving further adoption, or is this just a gimmick that will supply endless versions of centipede clones? What games, that can be home developed, do people think would benefit from the wiimote and nunchuck?"
"Home and independent game makers are getting a chance to put together titles for Nintendo's Wii console. The hi-tech firm has released a set of game-making tools called WiiWare that give budding game makers the data they need to use the console and its innovative controller.
Do Slashdotters think this will drive a decent selection of games for the Wii driving further adoption, or is this just a gimmick that will supply endless versions of centipede clones? What games, that can be home developed, do people think would benefit from the wiimote and nunchuck?"
Submission + - Internet Connection Speed Reccomended For Gaming
Red Mage 13 writes: I'm considering dumping my current ISP, and the thing that I'm most concerned about is finding a good, cheap connection that will allow me to play last-gen PC games (and Xbox live) without too much lag. Is 640kb/s enough, proving Bill Gates right, or should I splurge on a blisteringly fast connection?
Submission + - Zap2It Labs Closing Its Doors (zap2it.com)
keller999 writes: Zap2It Labs, the episode listing provider for MythTV, has decided to close its doors. The following notice is posted on their homepage.
For several years we have offered a free TV listings service to hobbyists for their own personal, noncommercial use. In October of 2004 we posted here an open letter saying the future of Zap2it Labs was at risk because of certain growing misuses of the Zap2it Labs data. Unfortunately this misuse has continued and grown. These misuses, combined with other business factors have led to the decision to discontinue Zap2it Labs effective September 1, 2007.
There is a running discussion about this on the mythtv-users mailing list.
Submission + - ZendFramework: state of the project
An anonymous reader writes: After struggling for weeks with tutorials that don't have source code, articles that are out of date, and examples that are just plain wrong, I have to ask
<?php
$ZendFramework = IsItVaporWare() ? 'VaporWare' : 'UsefullYoungPadawanGiveThemMoreTime' ;
?>
What do you guys think?
<?php
$ZendFramework = IsItVaporWare() ? 'VaporWare' : 'UsefullYoungPadawanGiveThemMoreTime' ;
?>
What do you guys think?
Submission + - Neanderthal Man innovator, inventor of Windows (newsblaze.com)
newsblaze writes: "A University of Leicester archaeologist says Neanderthal man was not as stupid as has been made out. Early Neanderthals were devising new technologies and coming to terms with ecological challenges that defeated their immediate ancestors, Homo heidelbergensis. In Neanderthal Man Was An Innovator, he says "There has been a consensus that the modern human mind turned on like a light switch about 50,000 years ago, only in Africa. But many 'modern' traits like the use of grind stones or big game hunting began to accumulate in Africa 300,000 years ago.
It was the same in Europe with Neanderthals, there was a gradual accumulation of technology.""
Submission + - Illegal Monitoring at School
WyllDez writes: "I had an incident today an a high school in Toronto (Northern Secondary School), and I am unsure how to act. The computers in our library are monitored using Net Support School (http://www.netsupportschool.com/ ). I was completely unaware until our librarian came up to me, showed me a print out of my browsing history, programs I ran, and all of my key strokes, including my passwords to several websites. I have talked to quite a few students at our school, and all of them where unaware that they have been monitored. I looked throughout the library, and there are no signs anywhere mentioning that they are being monitored. In our usage agreement, it said that we would be monitored at the board level, and only browsing history would be monitored through the board proxies. It should also be noted that all of the key logs are available to anyone who finds the folder! What can we do about this?"
Submission + - WAN-friendly filesystems for Linux
An anonymous reader writes: What options are there for folks who want to have synchronized filesystems on Internet-connected Linux machines, like at two associated branch offices sharing common data, or a small office with an off-site machine maintained for disaster recover purposes? The files should appear to be local at both locations (caching and file-locking), and changes need to propagate efficiently between the two systems. If the Internet connection becomes temporarily unavailable, the data kept as available as possible on each end in the interim.
We're not talking about rsync-replicated snapshots, although those are useful too, but rather live, fast access to a shared filesystem, with the geographical separation transparent to the end users. If the filesystem is large, it can initially be "seeded" from an image on tape(s)/disk(s)/dvd(s). Both sides should be able to access the common data over local Samba shares, too, if they want.
Production quality reliable solutions that work over DSL-type connections are what we're looking for...
We're not talking about rsync-replicated snapshots, although those are useful too, but rather live, fast access to a shared filesystem, with the geographical separation transparent to the end users. If the filesystem is large, it can initially be "seeded" from an image on tape(s)/disk(s)/dvd(s). Both sides should be able to access the common data over local Samba shares, too, if they want.
Production quality reliable solutions that work over DSL-type connections are what we're looking for...
Submission + - Are Virtual Servers ready yet?
An anonymous reader writes: Marc Andreesen has been seeing rebuttals to his blog entry on iLike's recent scale out. Brian Aker has been commenting on how Marc is missing the point on how scale out should be done. He and others are saying that Virtual Servers are the way to go.
Are solutions like EC2, Xen, and others ready for deployment?
Submission + - Spammers spamming using our addresses
Vesty writes: "I recently enabled a catchall on our domain while our company transitioned to a new website. I didn't want emails going astray etc while things changed over... Recently I've noticed that on the catchall I get a LOT of 'delivery failure' and similar emails, that are all being returned to the same non active alias. After a bit of digging I discovered that about half a dozen different companies spam has been being sent using an alias at our domain as their from address. I've been slowly attempting to call each of the companies, most are extremely shady, occasionally I get a real person that supposedly knows nothing about it. It seems to me that each of these companies has farmed out there 'advertising' to the same third party that is using our address as their from address.
I'm sure this has happened to other people, what can we do to stop it? With the amount of spam these fools send I'm worried that any email from our domain will automatically be treated as spam... Anyone have any suggestions? Are they breaking any laws?"
Submission + - Just how delicate are modern hard drives?
RedBear writes: "Recently I've been researching the idea of setting up a computer system like the Mac mini on small to medium-size boats, for use as on-board entertainment centers and/or computer navigation systems. One of my main concerns has been figuring out whether the hard drive will need to be replaced with solid-state media in order to be completely reliable. Having been conditioned by various information sources over the years to treat a spinning hard drive like a baby made of eggshells, I was surprised to find many "car PC" enthusaists commenting in forums that they've had absolutely no problems using desktop hard drives in moving vehicles for years. I've also been surprised to find very little information about or mounting systems for "ruggedizing" hard drives for mobile use, besides some references to sticking a bit of rubber between the drive and the mounting frame, which really seems inadequate. So I'm left wondering, just how delicate is the modern hard drive, really? Are they hardier than I've always been led to believe? Is a modern hard drive ever actually likely to die from just being bumped around a bit, or do they usually die nowadays for other, more mysterious reasons?
Here's the scenario: A small boat (15-35ft) traveling on choppy or rough seas at various speeds can encounter several different kinds of motion, and that motion can shift very suddenly from going in one direction to going in a perpendicular or opposite direction. With the wrong hull design, cruising speeds or wave crest spacings, resonant vibrations can develop that can practically shake your teeth out of your head at times. Go over a big wave the wrong way and you can find yourself doing a belly-flop or nose-dive a dozen or more feet down into the trough behind it, with a nice resounding thump. Again entirely dependent on hull design and angle of incidence, but the harder you hit the water, the harder it hits back. Then there is the lovely continuous rocking (technically, pitching) and rolling that never really stops when you're in unprotected waters, and can vary from -85 to 85 degrees from one moment to the next. I can't imagine any of this motion being good for any kind of hard drive.
Now, a computer like a laptop or the Mac mini has a notebook-size 2.5" hard drive, which by all accounts will be more resistant to G-force shocks than a typical desktop-size 3.5" hard drive. I've read that this is mostly because of their use of "ramp load/unload" technology, where the drive head never touches the platters. Recently some desktop hard drives have started to use this ramp loading technology, so does that mean those desktop drives will be just as shock-resistant as notebook drives, or is the size difference also important? And just how motion resistant are the notebook drives, in a practical outside-the-testing-lab sense?
Some laptops and even drives these days also have motion sensors that will trigger the drive to park the heads during excessive movement, like when a laptop gets pulled off a table onto the floor. I have to guess on this but I'm suspecting these motion sensing systems would get triggered far too often, possibly interrupting the computer during important read or write activities, at best causing a performance hit and at worst crashing the system if it happens too often. So this doesn't seem like the ultimate solution for a drive that may be affected by nearly continuous strong G-forces.
Is anyone here experienced with building systems like this? I'm not talking about a typical car-PC traveling around on mostly paved city streets, I'm talking about a system that will stay functional and reliable while strapped in the back of a racing pickup while it goes through a thousand-mile off-road race through the Mojave desert. Does any company make mounting systems specifically for this kind of use, or is it totally nonsensical to expect any hard drive to survive under such conditions? My Google-fu may not be the best in the world, but I can usually ferret out what I'm looking for, and I've found basically zilch on ruggedized hard drives or mounting systems for either hard drives or computers in high G-force environments.
Keep in mind, one of my main goals is to keep costs as low as possible, so it would be interesting but pointless to discuss commercial solutions that cost a small fortune. The available specialized marine computer systems I saw seem to be designed for large commercial vessels and are horrendously expensive. We aren't talking about military clients here, just regular people who happen to live and/or work on boats. I just want to be able to take a regular computer and make a few ehancements that would allow it to be used on a boat reliably for years under any possible circumstances. Thus one of the main problems with solid-state media, it would cost 3-5 times as much to get 1/10th to 1/5th of the storage capacity, and that's comparing it to notebook hard drives. 160GB notebook HDD = $110, 16GB UDMA CompactFlash card = $300. With desktop hard drives the cost vs. capacity gap widens even further.
This is even more of a problem because one of the main advantages to using a system like the Mac mini would be its ability to run Windows in a virtual machine for access to a lot of Windows-only navigation, mapping/charting and GPS software as well as Windows-only drivers for GPS hardware, while still having access to the great stability and usability experience of Mac OS X, including the multimedia aspects like gigs of music and MP4/DivX rips of movies. The most recent versions of Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion both have snapshotting and reversion capabilities which would make it incredibly simple for non-technical users to recover from Windows software glitches while out at sea, and keep their software navigation systems working under almost any circumstances. But installing multiple operating systems (and keeping backups) and having access to all those multimedia files means you need plenty of disk space. For most people, obtaining an adequate amount of solid-state storage to really replace a 100+ gigabyte hard drive would be very cost-prohibitive.
If you were tasked with "ruggedizing" a computer system for use under similar circumstances, how would you go about it? How would you make a mounting system to protect a computer from G-forces that may sometimes be the equivalent of, let's say, being dropped on a carpeted floor from about desk height, over and over again? I don't think a couple of rubber feet will be quite enough, and I'm very interested in hearing ideas on simple padding and suspension systems that could isolate a computer from this level of G-shock. A bungie-cord type suspension system would probably just exacerbate the bouncing motion. It would need to be something different, something that would really dampen sudden motion rather than reacting to it. My only idea so far is complicated, probably expensive, and has something to do with counterweights, pulleys, copper tubing and neodymium magnets. Alternatives are welcome, as are any comments pointing out that I'm being ridiculous for thinking computers are so delicate. Am I? Please back up any such statements with references, of course."
Here's the scenario: A small boat (15-35ft) traveling on choppy or rough seas at various speeds can encounter several different kinds of motion, and that motion can shift very suddenly from going in one direction to going in a perpendicular or opposite direction. With the wrong hull design, cruising speeds or wave crest spacings, resonant vibrations can develop that can practically shake your teeth out of your head at times. Go over a big wave the wrong way and you can find yourself doing a belly-flop or nose-dive a dozen or more feet down into the trough behind it, with a nice resounding thump. Again entirely dependent on hull design and angle of incidence, but the harder you hit the water, the harder it hits back. Then there is the lovely continuous rocking (technically, pitching) and rolling that never really stops when you're in unprotected waters, and can vary from -85 to 85 degrees from one moment to the next. I can't imagine any of this motion being good for any kind of hard drive.
Now, a computer like a laptop or the Mac mini has a notebook-size 2.5" hard drive, which by all accounts will be more resistant to G-force shocks than a typical desktop-size 3.5" hard drive. I've read that this is mostly because of their use of "ramp load/unload" technology, where the drive head never touches the platters. Recently some desktop hard drives have started to use this ramp loading technology, so does that mean those desktop drives will be just as shock-resistant as notebook drives, or is the size difference also important? And just how motion resistant are the notebook drives, in a practical outside-the-testing-lab sense?
Some laptops and even drives these days also have motion sensors that will trigger the drive to park the heads during excessive movement, like when a laptop gets pulled off a table onto the floor. I have to guess on this but I'm suspecting these motion sensing systems would get triggered far too often, possibly interrupting the computer during important read or write activities, at best causing a performance hit and at worst crashing the system if it happens too often. So this doesn't seem like the ultimate solution for a drive that may be affected by nearly continuous strong G-forces.
Is anyone here experienced with building systems like this? I'm not talking about a typical car-PC traveling around on mostly paved city streets, I'm talking about a system that will stay functional and reliable while strapped in the back of a racing pickup while it goes through a thousand-mile off-road race through the Mojave desert. Does any company make mounting systems specifically for this kind of use, or is it totally nonsensical to expect any hard drive to survive under such conditions? My Google-fu may not be the best in the world, but I can usually ferret out what I'm looking for, and I've found basically zilch on ruggedized hard drives or mounting systems for either hard drives or computers in high G-force environments.
Keep in mind, one of my main goals is to keep costs as low as possible, so it would be interesting but pointless to discuss commercial solutions that cost a small fortune. The available specialized marine computer systems I saw seem to be designed for large commercial vessels and are horrendously expensive. We aren't talking about military clients here, just regular people who happen to live and/or work on boats. I just want to be able to take a regular computer and make a few ehancements that would allow it to be used on a boat reliably for years under any possible circumstances. Thus one of the main problems with solid-state media, it would cost 3-5 times as much to get 1/10th to 1/5th of the storage capacity, and that's comparing it to notebook hard drives. 160GB notebook HDD = $110, 16GB UDMA CompactFlash card = $300. With desktop hard drives the cost vs. capacity gap widens even further.
This is even more of a problem because one of the main advantages to using a system like the Mac mini would be its ability to run Windows in a virtual machine for access to a lot of Windows-only navigation, mapping/charting and GPS software as well as Windows-only drivers for GPS hardware, while still having access to the great stability and usability experience of Mac OS X, including the multimedia aspects like gigs of music and MP4/DivX rips of movies. The most recent versions of Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion both have snapshotting and reversion capabilities which would make it incredibly simple for non-technical users to recover from Windows software glitches while out at sea, and keep their software navigation systems working under almost any circumstances. But installing multiple operating systems (and keeping backups) and having access to all those multimedia files means you need plenty of disk space. For most people, obtaining an adequate amount of solid-state storage to really replace a 100+ gigabyte hard drive would be very cost-prohibitive.
If you were tasked with "ruggedizing" a computer system for use under similar circumstances, how would you go about it? How would you make a mounting system to protect a computer from G-forces that may sometimes be the equivalent of, let's say, being dropped on a carpeted floor from about desk height, over and over again? I don't think a couple of rubber feet will be quite enough, and I'm very interested in hearing ideas on simple padding and suspension systems that could isolate a computer from this level of G-shock. A bungie-cord type suspension system would probably just exacerbate the bouncing motion. It would need to be something different, something that would really dampen sudden motion rather than reacting to it. My only idea so far is complicated, probably expensive, and has something to do with counterweights, pulleys, copper tubing and neodymium magnets. Alternatives are welcome, as are any comments pointing out that I'm being ridiculous for thinking computers are so delicate. Am I? Please back up any such statements with references, of course."
