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Security

Submission + - Open-source implementation of the Google Auth (dendory.net)

elfguy writes: This is a quick demo of how to implement two-factor authentication using the Google Authenticator on your own site or application. I created this page in less than 2 hours to show how trivial it is to do. Here, you can register a user name, and then login by using the information provided by the Google Authenticator. Note that this would also work with any OATH HOTP compliant hardware token.
Technology

Submission + - Kohler's New Hi-Tech Toilet (pcworld.com)

WrongSizeGlass writes: PCWorld has an article on Kohler's new hi-tech toilet. The Numi comes complete with a detachable touch screen remote; motion-activated lid and seat; integrated air dryer; a heated seat; feet warmers; ambient lighting; built-in speakers with FM radio and an MP3 player input jack. If you have $6,300 to flush down the drain on a toilet this is for you.
Businesses

Submission + - This Tech Bubble is Different 3

theodp writes: Tech bubbles happen, writes BW's Ashlee Vance, but we usually gain from the innovation left behind. But this one — driven by social networking — could leave us empty-handed. Math whiz Jeff Hammerbacher provides a good case study. One year out of Harvard, 23-year-old Hammerbacher arrived at Facebook, was given the lofty title of research scientist and put to work analyzing how people used the social networking service. Over the next two years, Hammerbacher assembled a team that built a new class of analytical technology, one which translated insights into people's relationships, tendencies, and desires into precision advertising and higher sales. But something gnawed at him. Hammerbacher looked around Silicon Valley at companies like his own, Google, and Twitter, and saw his peers wasting their talents. 'The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads,' he says. 'That sucks.' Silicon Valley historian Christophe Lecuyer agrees: 'It's clear that the new industry that is building around Internet advertising and these other services doesn't create that many jobs. The loss of manufacturing and design knowhow is truly worrisome.'

Submission + - Judge Reveals Secret Righthaven Copyright Contract

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Joe Mullin writes in Paid Content that US District Judge Roger Hunt has unsealed the confidential agreement between Righthaven and the Las Vegas Review-Journal that has allowed Righthaven to sue over more than 250 charities, impoverished hobby bloggers, reporters, and the newspaper’s own sources for $150,000 each in damages and forfeiture of the sites' domain names, and the contents of the agreement could end up being ruinous for Righthaven’s campaign of copyright lawsuits. The problem is that Stephens Media, the company that owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal, didn’t actually assign any of the rights related to copyright to Righthaven except the right to sue—and that has been found in Silvers vs. Sony Pictures to be illegal under case law. In other words, none the important things that come with a copyright—such as the right to make copies of a work, or distribute it, or make “derivative works”—were handed off to Righthaven. Only the right to sue was given, and that makes the copyright transfer bogus, argue lawyers for the Democratic Underground who are being sued for one of its website users posting the first four paragraphs of a 34 paragraph story. “There is an old adage in the law that, if the facts are on your side, you pound on the facts. If the law is on your side, you pound on the law," says Judge Hunt who joins District Judge John Kane in becoming angry at Righthaven’s litigation behavior. "If neither the facts nor the law is on your side, you pound on the table. It appears there is a lot of table pounding going on here.”"
IT

Submission + - IT-department KPIs?

Abacus-keeper writes: So I run the IT department for a medium sized manufacturing corp spanning over four sites and countries. I've run this place place for the last five years, built it from the ground up.

It's a family operated company that has grown into a fairly complex operation over the years. Thus all my 'reporting' has been pretty simple. Ie wanna spend money (hire, procure, upgrade) I just submit a solid cost-benefit analysis to the CEO and done.

Today I got called in for a meeting and they wanted me to set up KPIs for my department. So my question to you is this: what are the KPIs you use? Like to use? Hate to use? Forced to use?

The layout
My staff provides, amongst other, these key tools for the company:
- Active domain server
- Exchange server
- Document servers (Both external and internal)
- ERP server
- CRM server
- WAN, LAN, VPN, VOIP, WLAN mesh infrastructure
- 24/7/365 on call hardware and software in-house support and
- Most of the end-user education

Sorry if might be a bit of today — crazy hangover for the apparent reason; since I have never been asked to provide this kind of information the corp is being sold/merged/taken over soon'ish.
Yes this is a throw away account.

Thx in advance!
Science

Submission + - New Spin on Graphene Makes It Magnetic (sciencedaily.com)

intellitech writes: A team led by Professor Andre Geim, a recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize for graphene, has shown that electric current can magnetize graphene. The researchers found a new way to interconnect spin and charge by applying a relatively weak magnetic field to graphene and found that this causes a flow of spins in the direction perpendicular to electric current, making a graphene sheet magnetised.
Google

Submission + - Google Videos will no longer playback

An anonymous reader writes: I received this email this morning: "Later this month, hosted video content on Google Video will no longer be available for playback. Google Video stopped taking uploads in May 2009 and now we’re removing the remaining hosted content... On April 29, 2011, videos that have been uploaded to Google Video will no longer be available for playback. " They've added a a download button for saving your content but it expires after May 13, 2011 and they encourage users to move the content to youTube. Personally, I hated youTube when it started with it's 10 min limits and crappy quality but have long since migrated. I want to write something troll like but I'll refrain. RIP.

Comment More bad business decisions (Score 1) 1

I never really understood why Cisco bought Flip in the first place. I thought GE had pretty much shown that conglomerates were not the way to go future? And Cisco was nowhere near being able to function as a conglomerate anyway. I don't think whoever made that decision asked, "How will buying Flip help us continue to dominate Brocade and other switch manufacturers?"
And who ever made the decision to just shut down Flip must have conversely asked this question: "How can I lose the largest possible amount of money for Cisco?"
Businesses

Submission + - Cisco Killed A Wi-Fi Enabled Flip (itworld.com) 1

jfruhlinger writes: "When Cisco killed the Flip earlier this week, a lot of tech commentators reacted with sadness. The video camera line might have seemed a bit out of date in the world of video-enabled smartphones, but they were much loved devices. And now word is filtering out that Flip had a Wi-Fi-enabled Flip camera, which may have had live Internet broadcasting capabilities, ready to be released at the moment when the decision to shut down the division was made."

Comment It would seem (Score 5, Insightful) 236

that given Mr. Kavoosi's lack of basic vocabulary knowledge, it's a good thing that he hires other people to write the papers he sells. Someone one who doesn't know what the word 'ethical' actually means would probably have a hard time writing papers that use other large words. Unless, perhaps, they were writing papers for business classes...

Comment Industry averages? (Score 1) 414

I read a couple of years ago from somthing study that Usenix did that the industry average of servers per admin was 60ish for Unix and a little 80ish for Windows. In the shops I have worked in, the average of *nix servers to admin has usually been between 40 and 50. The average of Windows server per admin has been closer to 80-90. But that's because those shops simply had more Windows servers for nominal functions (DCs, wins servers, etc.) The numbers of users per server directly served on the *nix side was typically higher because you had fewer backend process type servers for the Unix side than you did for the Windows side.

Comment Re:Paranoid about control (Score 1) 140

This is all true. But the reason that copyright is no longer effective at protecting work is that people lose respect for copyrights when they are extended essentially forever. Return copyright to 20 or 40 years, and I believe people would be a lot more respectful of it. Moreover, a larger number of people would be willing to support harsher penalties for copyright infringment if it were considerably shorter, IMO.

Comment Lacking in sensile associations (Score 1) 468

One of the problems with online textbooks is that they lack any sensile association. Sensile associations help people remember. Remember the smell of that musty textbook, and you have a much better chance of recalling what was in that musty textbook. Remember the feel of that shiny textbook page, you are more likely to recall what was on the page. If we cut out the sensile area of recall, all the evidence I've seen points to lower retention and poorer learning of subjects.

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