Comment Halo (Score 1) 216
This sounds like the Superintendent in Halo ODST.
Comment hackers called it in 1995 (Score 1) 225
KATE: RISC architecture is gonna change everything.
DADE: Yeah. RISC is good.
Ask Slashdot: Network Backup Solution Out of the Box? 251
First time accepted submitter file terminator writes "I want to buy a network drive for home usage, and am looking for something that would allow for secure and encrypted remote backups over the Internet to a second network drive, preferably advanced enough that all drive content does not have to be transmitted every time. The solution may come as a pair of network drives, and two-way synching would actually be a plus. The drives would be behind respective NATs and setup must allow connecting to any target port. The solution should be readily available (no obscure/local brands/solutions) and not unreasonably expensive. Does anyone have any recommendations for a full out of the box solution?"
Comment Re:Ack! (Score 1) 177
the concern I have is that CyanogenMod is so good because it lacks the crap that handset manufacturers force onto users. I doubt that a phone running a Samsung branded CyanogenMod will be able to escape having (for example) unremoveable Verizon junk forced into it.
8 Grams of Thorium Could Replace Gasoline In Cars 937
An anonymous reader writes "Thorium, an abundant and radioactive rare earth mineral, could be used in conjunction with a laser and mini turbines to easily produce enough electricity to power a vehicle. When thorium is heated, it generates further heat surges, allowing it to be coupled with mini turbines to produce steam that can then be used to generate electricity. Combining a laser, radioactive material, and mini-turbines might sound like a complicated alternative solution to filling your gas tank, but there's one feature that sells it as a great alternative solution: 1 gram of thorium produces the equivalent energy of 7,500 gallons of gasoline."
Comment Re:"May cost"?? (Score 1) 591
why are people modding this up? i bet this guy had the same short-sighted view about the mobile market before Android came out and now is the market leader. as more and more applications are moving away from desktop apps to online based applications, it's certainly plausible that at some point in the future people will start asking why they are still paying for the privilege of an OS like Windows when everything they need to do on their computer takes place in their browser. and as the differences between "computers" and "phones" is continually blurred, how can you be so sure that at some point in the near future ChromeOS/Android won't become a dominant player on the "desktop"? that too is certainly plausible.
The End of Paper Books 669
Hugh Pickens writes "Books are on their way to extinction, writes Kevin Kelly, adding that we are in a special moment when paper books are plentiful and cheap that will not last beyond the end of this century. 'It seems hard to believe now, but within a few generations, seeing an actual paper book will be as rare for most people as seeing an actual lion.' But a prudent society keeps at least one specimen of all it makes, so Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, has decided that we should keep a copy of every book that Google and Amazon scan so that somewhere in the world there was at least one physical copy to represent the millions of digital copies. That way, if anyone ever wondered if the digital book's text had become corrupted or altered, they could refer back to the physical book that was archived somewhere safe. The books are being stored in cardboard boxes, stacked five high on a pallet wrapped in plastic, stored 40,000 strong in a shipping container, inside a metal warehouse on a dead-end industrial street near the railroad tracks in Richmond California. In this nondescript and 'nothing valuable here' building, Kahle hopes to house 10 million books — about the contents of a world-class university library. 'It still amazes me that after 20 years the only publicly available back up of the internet is the privately funded Internet Archive. The only broad archive of television and radio broadcasts is the same organization,' writes Kelly. 'They are now backing up the backups of books. Someday we'll realize the precocious wisdom of it all and Brewster Kahle will be seen as a hero.'"
Comment Re:Somewhat at PSU. (Score 1) 432
i think PSLUG needs to come back. i remember the old install-fests and linux demo day where they had all these (now bankrupt) Linux companies come demo their products.
When AIM Was Our Facebook 395
Hugh Pickens writes "Gizmodo reports that there was a stretch of time in the 90s and early 00s when AOL was a social requisite. 'Everyone had an AIM handle,' write Adrian Covert and Sam Biddle. 'You didn't have to worry about who used what. Saying "what's your screenname" was tantamount to asking for someone's number — everyone owned it, everyone used it, it was simple, and it worked.' When we all finally got broadband, it was always on and your friends were always right there on your buddy list, around the clock. AIM was the first time that it felt like we had presences online, making it normal, for the first time ever, to make public what you were doing. 'Growing up with AIM, it became more than just a program we used. It turned into a culture all its own—long before we realized we'd been living it.'"
Comment tools (Score 2) 393
now where is network support, ssh, nmap and other tools that could make this actually useful to the roaming sysadmin?
Comment Re:Absurd (Score 1) 729
on the login screen you type in your username then at the bottom select "Ubuntu Classic" from the list of options. It's not "hidden deep in the operating system", in fact it's the first screen you see.
Ask Slashdot: Do I Give IT a Login On Our Dept. Server? 1307
jddorian writes "I am head of a clinical division at an academic hospital (not Radiology, but similarly tech oriented). My fellow faculty (a dozen or so) want to switch from a paper calendar to electronic (night and weekend on-call schedule). Most have an iPhone or similar, so I envisaged a CalDAV server. The Hospital IT department doesn't offer any iPhone compatible calendar tool, so I bought (with my cash) a tiny server, installed BSD and OpenLDAP for accounts, and installed and configured DAViCal. After I tested it out, I emailed IT to ask to allow port 8443 through the hospital firewall to this server. The tech (after asking what port 8443 was for), said he would unblock the port after I provide him with a login account on the machine (though 'I don't need root access'). I was taken aback, and after considering it, I am still leaning toward opposing this request, possibly taking this up the chain. I'm happy to allow any scan, to ensure it has no security issues, but I'd rather not let anyone else have a login account. What do the readers of Slashdot think? Should I give IT a login account on a server that is not owned or managed by them?"
Comment the /. staff (Score 5, Interesting) 198
I kinda like this sorta post. I used to feel a closer connection with the
Comment time (Score 1) 500
this all comes down to time. i can reapply the data to a fresh VM image in a matter of hours and have it back up and running, pretty much without variation. hunting down a deep, dark problem can take 30 minutes or it might take days, and depending on the problem, that may simply be unacceptable.
the real skill is knowing when to pull the trigger on a rebuild vs knowing when it's something you can find and fix. hunting down problems and fixing them is something many sysadmins crave. at least VM's give us the ability to investigate the broken machine at our leisure, while a working VM can jump into production.
unless management wants to rely solely on rebuilds and the time investment it takes to do them every time, there will always be a need for sysadmins to analyze problems and figure out the "whys" and "hows" that caused them.
The Case of Apple's Mystery Screw 845
Pickens writes "Network World reports that in the past if you wanted to remove the outer case on your iPhone 4 to replace the battery or a broken screen, you could use a Phillips screwdriver to remove two tiny screws at the base of the phone and then simply slide off the back cover. But now Apple is replacing the outer screw with a mysterious tamper-resistant 'pentalobular' screw across its most popular product lines, making it harder for do-it-yourselfers to make repairs. What about existing products in the field? Pentalobular screws might find their way into them, too. 'Apple's latest policy will make your blood boil,' says Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit. 'If you take your iPhone 4 into Apple for any kind of service, they will sabotage it by replacing your Phillips screws with the new, tamper-resistant screws. We've spoken with the Apple Store geniuses tasked with carrying out this policy, and they are ashamed of the practice.' Of course, only Apple-authorized service technicians have Pentalobular screwdrivers and they're not allowed to resell them. 'Apple sees a huge profit potential,' says Wiens. 'A hundred dollars per year in incremental revenue on their installed base is a tremendous opportunity.'"
