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Submission + - Slashdot Poll: Favorite cryptocurrency

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: What is your favorite cryptocurrency?

* Bitcoin
* Litecoin
* Dogecoin
* Darkcoin
* Peercoin
* CmdrTacoin
* Others (please specify)
* I prefer my coins cold. hard and metallic

Submission + - Ars editor learns feds have his old IP addresses, full credit card numbers (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: FOIA request turns up 9 years of records, including plaintext credit card numbers

In May 2014, Cyrus Farivar reported on his efforts to learn what the feds know about me whenever I enter and exit the country. In particular, he wanted my Passenger Name Records (PNR), data created by airlines, hotels, and cruise ships whenever travel is booked.

ASK ARS: CAN I SEE WHAT INFORMATION THE FEDS HAVE ON MY TRAVEL?

One Ars editor tries to FOIA travel documents on himself.
But instead of providing what he had requested, the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) turned over only basic information about my travel going back to 1994. So he appealed—and without explanation, the government recently turned over the actual PNRs I had requested the first time.
The 76 new pages of data, covering 2005 through 2013, show that CBP retains massive amounts of data on us when we travel internationally. His own PNRs include not just every mailing address, e-mail, and phone number I've ever used; some of them also contain:

The IP address that I used to buy the ticket
His credit card number (in full)
The language he used
Notes on his phone calls to airlines, even for something as minor as a seat change
The breadth of long-term data retention illustrates yet another way that the federal government enforces its post-September 11 "collect it all" mentality.

Submission + - Anyone can write an OS kernel (arjunsreedharan.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Here is a simple kernel that can be loaded with the GRUB bootloader on an x86 machine. Anyone with a basic understanding of the C language and assembly can write, build and run this kernel. This is the "Hello World" among kernels.

Comment Re:This isn't just "Taken care of" by a hypervisor (Score 1) 161

by jones_supa (#47492863) Attached to: Linux Needs Resource Management For Complex Workloads
Why is the I/O layer team of Linux not taking responsibility to make TRIM work properly? Linux still sends individual TRIM sector commands instead of TRIM ranges. This creates unnecessary traffic in the bus and is especially nasty for everything before SATA 3.1, because then the TRIM command has to be executed synchronously, meaning that the device command queue has to be completely flushed first.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Linux Login and Resource Management/Restriction in a Computer Lab

Submitted by rongten
rongten writes: I am managing a computer lab composed of various kind of Linux workstations, from small desktops to powerful workstations with plenty of ram and cores. The users' $HOME is NFS mounted, and they either access via console (no user switch allowed), ssh or x2go. In the past the powerful workstations were reseved to certain power users, but now even "regular" students may need to have access to high memory machines for some tasks.
I ask slashdort, is there a sort of resource management that would permit: to forbid a same user to log graphically more than once (like UserLock), to limit the amount of ssh sessions (i.e. no user using distcc and spamming the rest of the machines or even worse running in parallel), to give priority to the console user (i.e. automatically renicing remote users jobs and restricting their memory usage), to avoid swapping and waiting (i.e. all the users trying to log into the latest and greatest machine, so have a limited amount of logins proportional to the capacity of the machine).
The system being put in place uses Fedora 20, ldap PAM authentication, it is puppet managed, and NFS based. In the past I tried to achieve similar functionality via cron jobs, login scripts, ssh and nx management, queuing system.
But it is not an elegant solution and it is hacked a lot.
Since I think these requirements should be pretty standard for a computer lab, I am surprised to see that I cannot find something already written for it.
Does any of you know of a similar system, preferably opensource? A commercial solution could be acceptable as well.

Submission + - World Health Organization Calls For Decriminalisation of Drug Use (tdpf.org.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We've known for a while: the War on Drugs isn't working. Scientists, journalists, economists, and politicians have all argued against continuing the expensive and ineffective fight. Now, the World Health Organization has said flat out that nations should work to decriminalize the use of drugs. The recommendations came as part of a report released this month focusing on the prevention and treatment of HIV. "The WHO's unambiguous recommendation is clearly grounded in concerns for public health and human rights. Whilst the call is made in the context of the policy response to HIV specifically, it clearly has broader ramifications, specifically including drug use other than injecting. In the report, the WHO says: 'Countries should work toward developing policies and laws that decriminalize injection and other use of drugs and, thereby, reduce incarceration. ...Countries should ban compulsory treatment for people who use and/or inject drugs." The bottom line is that the criminalization of drug use comes with substantial costs, while providing no substantial benefit.

Comment Re:Your Results Will Vary (Score 1) 241

by jones_supa (#47488003) Attached to: Math, Programming, and Language Learning

You go to the gym not because you have aspirations of mastering a bench press, but because you aspire for a stronger, healthier body. Mathematics are an example of exercise equipment for a software developer.

As an important sidenote, I want to underline that literally going to gym is also important to a software developer. :) Your mind will greatly benefit from the energized body.

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