Comment Sad really (Score 1) 37
I thought I was a fan but I didn't know this guy even existed until he died, but then that is true for 99.999% of everyone else in the world so nvm I am going to crawl back into my hole now.
Comment Re:Sure they can claim it (Score 2, Insightful) 399
... and you KNOW that Uvex is getting exactly the kind of publicity from exactly the demographic they would love to market to, for free.
Now THAT'S good business sense
IOC Claims Olympian Lindsey Vonn's Name As Intellectual Property 399
gehrehmee writes "As usual, the International Olympic Committee is coming down on hard on people mentioning things related to the Olympics without permission. This time it's UVEX sporting supplies, which sponsors Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn. Without explaination, their front page was today updated to include a tongue-in-cheek poem about UVEX's interaction with the IOC. Can the IOC really claim an Olypmian's name as their own intellectual property?"
Astronomers Discover the Coolest Known Sub-Stellar Body 60
Hugh Pickens writes "Science Daily reports that using the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii, astronomers have discovered what may be the coolest sub-stellar body ever found outside our own solar system. Too small to be stars and with insufficient mass to maintain hydrogen-burning nuclear fusion reactions in their cores, 'brown dwarfs' have masses smaller than stars but larger than gas giant planets like Jupiter, with an upper limit in between 75 and 80 Jupiter masses. 'This looks like the fourth time in three years that the UKIRT has made a record breaking discovery of the coolest known brown dwarf, with an estimated temperature not far above 200 degrees Celsius,' says Dr. Philip Lucas at the University of Hertfordshire. Due to their low temperature these objects are very faint in visible light, and are detected by their glow at infrared wavelengths. The object known as SDSS1416+13B is in a wide orbit around a somewhat brighter and warmer brown dwarf, SDSS1416+13A, and the pair is located between 15 and 50 light years from the solar system, which is quite close in astronomical terms."
Apple Patches Massive Holes In OS X 246
Trailrunner7 writes with this snippet from ThreatPost: "Apple's first Mac OS X security update for 2010 is out, providing cover for at least 12 serious vulnerabilities. The update, rated critical, plugs security holes that could lead to code execution vulnerabilities if a Mac user is tricked into opening audio files or surfing to a rigged Web site." Hit the link for a list of the highlights among these fixes.
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...
