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Data Storage

Submission + - Why we hate lawyers in IT: Reason No. 1,997

Submitted by jcatcw
jcatcw writes: How many laws affect IT? Steve Duplessie says zillions. Most are about record retention, and they were a boon to the storage industry. The lawyers on the good side put tough laws in place to say, "Thou shalt keep stuff, electronic or other, so that we can see it when we think you're a lying dirtbag." The lawyers on the bad side then started making money, first by trying to show their clients how to skirt the issue, and then by showing them how to comply. But now retention isn't enough. You have to also find the stuff. There are numerous approaches to the problem, but they seem to be lumped into these basic categories: 1. Let someone else deal with it; 2. Categorize and classify things up front; 3. Index stuff in the backup stream; 4. Internal search technologies.
Biotech

Submission + - Fuel Cell Car and Experiment Kit

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Kids can't help but get excited about saving the planet when they see their own model car zoom across the floor powered by nothing but water! Fuel-cell technology is the environmentally friendly wave of the future. The water becomes fuel before kids' eyes as electrolysis (powered by a solar cell) breaks it into its separate components of hydrogen and oxygen, creating a gas that is then stored for use by the fuel cell when it's time for the car to get going. During the building process, children from age twelve can use the included 96-page Experiment Manual as a guide to performing thirty experiments on such subjects as the effects of direct and indirect radiation, the characteristics of a solar module, constructing and loading a reversible fuel cell, and decomposition of water in the fuel cell, plus they can design experiments of their own. The kit contains everything children need to build and experiment with their fuel cell and car (except 1 quart of distilled water)."
User Journal

Journal Journal: visible progress in the kitchen project

Journal by swschrad

Hooooooo-kay. we're having some fun now!

cabinets are all sanded down, stained, and varnished. countertops with oak reveal bevel on the edges are built and installed. got the sink cut in and the water and sewer redone. dishwasher drain leak is fixed and it goes in tonight. the drawer fronts, all 21 of them, are cut from red oak and fitted, the staining and varnishing is done, and the interiors are to be painted this week. augmented wiring is fully done, and the tile backsplash is
Microsoft

Submission + - Visual Studio: Industry Leading IDE, but in what?

Submitted by
Yoooder
Yoooder writes: "I've used Visual Studio 2005 for some time, but the longer I use it the more frustrated I get with it. Amid all it's wonderful features there's something smelly, something that oozes from the cracks and lets me know that underneath me there is something disturbing and wrong. Random crashes, out of control memory usage, a finicky designer, and a lack of updates all plague this IDE — and the grand-daddy of them all is a Service Pack that runs umpteen times, requiring user interaction the whole way through and lacking proof of any real fixes.

Does anyone else have the feeling that Microsoft's flagship programming tool is a victim of Too Much Too Fast? What are your horror stories within the unpredictable vessel of vs2005?"
Technology (Apple)

Submission + - New Job Board Has Really Cool & Unique Technol

Submitted by
Carl Williams
Carl Williams writes: "I recently discovered a new IT job board called Odinjobs. It is for IT professionals, but what is different about it is the technology. They claim to have an in-house developed technology that "reads" your resumes for context much more accurately than keywords. This technology allows job seekers to save valuable time by prioritizing relevant job opportunities. There is also a RSS feed available that will only bring the most relevant jobs to job seekers."
Programming

Submission + - Adventuresome or "hands on" tech careers?

Submitted by omission9
omission9 writes: For about 10 years I have worked mostly behind a desk in a cubicle and am starting to feel that this environment is making me miserable. The cheap fluorescent lights, the stuffy air, and the restless feeling I get from just sitting so long are starting to really annoy me. My background is mainly as a programmer but I started my career as a network engineer/network administrator. I am also a member of the US Naval Reserve and am cleared as high as Top Secret. Are there any jobs out there that match this sort of skill set(more or less programmer but generally excellent tech skills) that don't require being stuck behind a desk? Paying relatively well would be a major plus as would something that provides a solid career(20+ years of work). Anyone out there in /. land that is reading this from anywhere other than a cube farm that may have some advice?
Announcements

Submission + - $25 Mill for solution to removing greenhouse gases

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "The Virgin Earth Challenge (of Virgin Airlines fame) is a prize of $25m for whoever can demonstrate to the judges' satisfaction a commercially viable design which results in the removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases so as to contribute materially to the stability of Earth's climate. http://www.virginearth.com/"
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Welcome to garage door opener hell

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "The Washington Post has an interesting story of military abuse today: abuse of garage door openers. Seems a large number of folks living near the Quantico Marine base in eastern Virginia have found their garage door openers being rendered useless by a wireless signal coming from the base. And they aren't the first, the story says. Garage door openers have been zapped in other towns near military operations for a couple years now experts say. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1184 7"
Education

Submission + - Jakon Nielson on Life-Long Computer Skills

Submitted by
khendron
khendron writes: "The Jakob Nielson's latest newsletter, he laments the fact that schools appear to be teaching kids how to use specific computer application (he cites Excel in his example). What a waste of time, since these skills will be useless by the time the kids graduate. Instead, he lists a number of "life-long" computer skills that we should be teaching kids: Search Strategies, Information Credibility, Information Overload, Writing for Online Readers, Computerized Presentation Skills, Workspace Ergonomics, Debugging, and User Testing and other Basic Usability Guidelines.

From the article about Debugging: "We shouldn't turn everyone into a programmer, but the basic debugging concept is a fundamental survival skill in the computer era. Most spreadsheets contain formula errors, for example, and unless people know how to find such mistakes, they'll make decisions based on the wrong numbers."

Who thinks his list is accurate? Or complete?"
Security

Submission + - Modern Day Witch-Hunt in Connecticut

Submitted by zhenya00
zhenya00 writes: USAToday is reporting on a story most of us are already familiar with; the case of Julie Amero, a 40 year old Norwich, Connecticut substitute teacher who has been convicted of four counts of risk of injury to a minor when the un-patched Windows 98 computer she had used to check her email began to display a flurry of pornographic pop-ups to the students in her classroom. She faces up to 40 years in prison when she is sentenced this Friday March 2.
From the article:

"Julie Amero was a victim of a school that couldn't be bothered to protect its computers, of a prosecutor without the technology background to understand what he was doing, a police "expert" who was not, and a jury misled by all of them. "Miscarriage of justice" doesn't begin to describe it."
Can this country really allow something like this to happen? Why isn't there general outrage on the front page of every newspaper? Why aren't those responsible being flooded with calls and emails from angry citizens?
The Internet

Submission + - Wikipedians are 42% Liberal, 8% Conservative

Submitted by
Jon
Jon writes: "Jimmy Wales has claimed that Wikipedians are more likely to be liberal, and Wikipedia has been accused of liberal bias. But a sampling of 901 Wikipedians reveals surprising statistics. 42% of Wikipedians self-identify as liberal (49% is current American average) 8% of Wikipedians self-identify as conservative (41% is current American average) 42% of Wikipedians self-identify as libertarian (5% is a rough American average) So liberals are proportionately represented on Wikipedia, conservatives are very under-represented, and libertarians are extremely over-represented."

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