Comment Oh sure its ok for Corporations... (Score 1) 553
If the government did this, it would be called "Socialism". I guess its ok for Corporations to do this sort of thing.
Lack of Manpower May Kill VLC For Mac 398
plasmacutter writes "The Video Lan dev team has recently come forward with a notice that the number of active developers for the project's MacOS X releases has dropped to zero, prompting a halt in the release schedule. There is now a disturbing possibility that support for Mac will be dropped as of 1.1.0. As the most versatile and user-friendly solution for bridging the video compatibility gap between OS X and windows, this will be a terrible loss for the Mac community. There is still hope, however, if the right volunteers come forward."
Zombie Pigs First, Hibernating Soldiers Next 193
ColdWetDog writes "Wired is running a story on DARPA's effort to stave off battlefield casualties by turning injured soldiers into zombies by injecting them with a cocktail of one chemical or another (details to be announced). From the article, 'Dr. Fossum predicts that each soldier will carry a syringe into combat zones or remote areas, and medic teams will be equipped with several. A single injection will minimize metabolic needs, de-animating injured troops by shutting down brain and heart function. Once treatment can be carried out, they'll be "re-animated" and — hopefully — as good as new.' If it doesn't pan out we can at least get zombie bacon and spam."
Scientists Say a Dirty Child Is a Healthy Child 331
Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California have shown that the more germs a child is exposed to, the better their immune system in later life. Their study found that keeping a child's skin too clean impaired the skin's ability to heal itself. From the article: "'These germs are actually good for us,' said Professor Richard Gallo, who led the research. Common bacterial species, known as staphylococci, which can cause inflammation when under the skin, are 'good bacteria' when on the surface, where they can reduce inflammation."
Comment Helium-3 (Score 1) 703
Moon all the way. We need to mine some of that yummy Helium-3 so we can finally move forward.
Submission + - Tracking my kid's usage on a Linux box?
bjcopeland writes: My oldest has reached 14 and he uses an Ubuntu laptop to do his homework and web surfing. Is there a good set of tools I can use to track his usage? I know this is a touchy subject for some of you but my concern is more protection and also to make sure he is actually doing his homework when he says he is ;). I promise I will talk openly with him about whatever he finds and not restrict his usage (he's a good kid). I also want to get alerted when he runs into something really scary that could give him post traumatic stress disorder. I am going to implement a squid proxy just to track where he's been. What other suggestions does this great community have? I have a couple Linux servers in the house to play with and I already have some ideas, but without polluting this question too much, I'd rather wait to see what responses I get. What say you Slashdot?
Comment Re:Start with disaster scenarios (Score 1) 528
Totally agree. What we have done is have the location, rack, elevation, and purpose in the naming convention for the hardware as well as documenting what that all means in human terms.
Comment Re:Start with disaster scenarios (Score 1) 528
Roff and grep are neat if you know which files to grep from, where they live AND what to look for. Companies like Splunk are making money for a reason; i.e. sometimes you need the latest version of everything available for you at a moments notice when it is 3am and your production network is on fire and your boss is over your shoulder screaming at you and customers are on the phone all pissed off, etc. etc. Having a readily available, up to date, single source database of readable information takes the edge off. How do I know? I've been there many times my friend. As far as my credentials, I won't respond to a troll about that.
Comment Re:Start with disaster scenarios (Score 1) 528
Wiki's work, but I am thinking more along the lines of Lucene where you can point it at existing data without much effort. Assuming config changes, cert and license data and network diagrams have usable text already associated with them, you can save a great deal of time just indexing what you have.
Comment Start with disaster scenarios (Score 5, Informative) 528
For me, visio's are great and everything, passwords too, but really the most valuable thing you can do is document single points of failure, outdated software/hardware, etc., license keys/expiration dates, cert expiration dates, personal support contacts you have and all vendor relationship details as well are essential. Do you use change control? If you do, go back and comment your changes, if not, do the best you can at explaining why things are the way they are. Get some open source software that is good at indexing data and create a searchable knowledge base from the information above. Don't concentrate on docs that can be found on the web at first because any admin worth their salt will know where to look for how to's, etc. Focus on the why's, the where's and disaster recovery.
My two cents...
Comment Re:Summer block buster (Score 2, Informative) 145
One hundred million years ago a termite was wounded and its abdomen split open
That would make a better film than most of the crap out there at the moment.
Heh sounds like the beginning of an 'Alien' sequel.
Comment Re:Not my fault (Score 1) 517
As a developer, I say that surely it's the tester's fault if there's flaws!
Funny, and true. Its all about resources and piorities. Huge companies like Microsoft really have fewer excuses given the amount of resources they have to create and release good stable code. As far as priorities are concerned, if your huge budget is spent on marketing and new features but lacking in resources to make the existing product stable, then the threat of a lawsuit may just re-align those priorities.
As far as free software (GPL) is concerned it is your duty to report bugs back to the community and even fix them if you have the skills. Open source by nature is "QA'd" by the community which in turn can make a more stable (read: Linux, the Gimp, etc.) product in the long run. To put it bluntly, who are you going to sue, the whole open source community?
In conclusion, closed source should not be exempt from this, but open source is. Who's with me?
Predator C Avenger Makes First Flights 304
stoolpigeon writes "General Atomics' new unmanned combat aerial vehicle, the Predator C Avenger, has been making test flights. This new Predator has a stealthy design, 20-hour endurance, is jet powered and has an internal weapons bay. A number of photos have just become available. 'The aircraft was designed so the wings can be folded for storage in hangars or aircraft carrier operations if a naval customer is found. Cassidy, a retired admiral, has talked about a possible Navy role for Predator C since 2002. The Navy was interested in the Predator B's capabilities, but didn't want to introduce any new propeller-driven aircraft onto carrier decks. The UAV also comes with a tailhook, suggesting that carrier-related trials are planned. The inner section of the cranked wing is deep, providing structural strength for carrier landings and generous fuel volume while maintaining a dry, folding outer wing. Right now, the US Air Force and Royal Air Force are considered the most likely users.'"
Cutting Steel With Flaming Bacon Weapons 73
Ed Pegg writes "Theo Gray demonstrates the Bacon Lance, a flaming meatsword that can cut through steel. Yes, with some ordinary bacon, and some pure oxygen, it's possible to cut through security doors. Form the article, 'I recently committed myself to the goal, before the weekend was out, of creating a device entirely from bacon and using it to cut a steel pan in half. My initial attempts were failures, but I knew success was within reach when I was able to ignite and melt the pan using seven beef sticks and a cucumber.' This comes out right after his profusely illustrated book of science experiments, Mad Science."
Creating a Low-Power Cloud With Netbook Chips 93
Al writes "Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have created a remarkably low-power server architecture using netbook processors and flash memory cards. The server design, dubbed a 'fast array of wimpy nodes,' or FAWN, is only designed to perform simple tasks, but the CMU team say it could be perfect for large Web companies that have to retrieve large amounts of data from RAM. A set-up including 21 individual nodes draws a maximum of just 85 watts under real-world conditions. The researchers say that a FAWN cluster could offer a low-power replacement for sites that currently rely on Memcached to access data from RAM."
