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Networking

Why is the military REALLY blocking MySpace?

Submitted by Lurker187
Lurker187 writes "OK, despite the subject, I'm not necessarily predisposed one way or the other. However, my last two routers for my home network allow me to deny access to certain domains, reserve bandwidth for certain uses, or limit the bandwidth devoted to certain uses. But, since I know very little about managing a huge network, I want to ask you: Is it really not possible for a large organization to limit the impact of surfing on their bandwidth, as the military seems to be claiming by omission? According to them, sites are being blocked ONLY because of the impact that users accessing those sites has on bandwidth. Is this common practice, are they lazy, are they maybe lacking the resources to allow them to prioritize bandwidth? I wonder whether a network admin could come up with a solution if they really wanted to allow these uses of the network."
Businesses

Can you punish your users?

Submitted by beerdini
beerdini writes "Every company that I have worked for has an employee technology agreement that everyone that uses a computer needs to sign off on. The agreement usually says that failure to follow the rules will result in the termination of technology privileges. Has anyone ever worked at a place that actually has removed someone's technology privileges for a violation? In my opinion, doing this would be more a punishment for the person's co-workers since they would have to make up for that person's lost privileges, and management is usually unwilling to enforce the guidelines that they've spent countless hours discussing and printing on those documents that they make everyone sign. Are there any realistic forms of "punishment" that IT staff can enforce to teach their users to stop doing the things that are a violation of the workplace policy? Techniques that after getting proper authorization from supervisors that would punish the violating user but still allow them to perform the duties of their job?"
Patents

Brazil breaks patent on AIDS drug

Submitted by gusmao
gusmao writes "It is the first time Brazil has bypassed a patent to acquire cheaper drugs for its AIDS prevention program, although it has threatened to do so before to force drug makers to lower prices. Talks over the price of Merck's drug, Efavirenz, broke off on Thursday when the health ministry rejected the New Jersey-based company's offer to cut its price, $1.59 per pill, by 30 percent. Brazil wanted to pay what Merck charges Thailand, or $0.65 per pill."
Portables (Apple)

World's first iPod piano dock

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes "Pianos suck, unless of course they have an iPod dock. That's right. But after today, that's no longer a problem because PianoDisc this week introduced its iPod docking piano 'iQ' which it says though is patented technology will let almost any piano play itself according to the melody of the iPod. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1486 9"
Mozilla

Open formats save the day

Submitted by
Amnl4ixoye
Amnl4ixoye writes "This evening, I had the unfortunate experience of shift-deleting my entire Inbox for one of my accounts in Thunderbird. However, thanks in part to their openness of formats and standards, I was able to save the day by making some simple changes. Thank you open and clear formats!"
The Internet

Internet social evolution moving faster than life

Submitted by DarkenWood
DarkenWood writes "What does the Slashdot community think of the idea that the social evolution of the internet is moving more rapidly along the Marxist progression towards a pure Communism? There seem to be many examples of this taking place in the form of Open Source Software, Creative Commons, open hardware, Wikipedia, etc... In what other ways do you see the social evolution of the internet moving faster than the individual, or collective, societies around the globe?"

Often things ARE as bad as they seem!