md27 - Slashdot User

WhiteHouse.gov Releases Open Source Code 161

Posted by kdawson on Friday April 23, 2010 @09:42AM from the of-by-for-and-to-the-people dept.

schliz writes "The White House has released four custom modules for the Drupal content management system. The modules address scalability, communication, and accessibility for disabled users, and the release is expected to benefit both the Drupal community and the WhiteHouse.gov site as the code is reviewed and improved by the open source community." Reader ChiefMonkeyGrinder adds an opinion piece with a somewhat envious view from the UK: "Open source is treated as something akin to devil-worshipping in some parts of government. So, the idea that a major project in the government backyard would be based on something as basic as Drupal is pretty far-fetched. No, this side of the Atlantic would have involved a closed-tender process; a decision made [behind] closed doors based on proprietary software and we'd be completely in the dark about costs, about delays, and about functionality."

First Collisions At the LHC 256

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday March 30, 2010 @08:39AM from the make-sure-the-world-is-still-here dept.

An anonymous reader writes "At 1:06 p.m. Central European Summer Time (CEST) today, the first protons collided at 7 TeV in the Large Hadron Collider. These first collisions, recorded by the LHC experiments, mark the start of the LHC's research program."

Comment Managerial On Call? (Score 1) 410

by md27 on Tuesday December 08, 2009 @06:28PM (#30371376) Attached to: Saying No To Promotions Away From Tech?

On call for what, emergency meetings about requirements documents or SLAs? :D But seriously, if you enjoy the tech don't move away from it, not everyone wants to go sit in meetings all day, and they should find a way to let you advance and stay in the technical realm, or at least keep giving you raises/random title upgrades to keep things interesting.

Comment Absolutely (Score 1) 435

by md27 on Tuesday November 24, 2009 @03:35PM (#30217460) Attached to: Would You Use a Free Netbook From Google?

Where do I submit my mailing address? Create a new Google account just for that purpose till you figure out just how much it phones home.

Judge Excludes 3 "John Does" From RIAA Subpoena 225

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @06:43AM from the sue-doe-actions dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In one of the RIAA's 'John Doe' cases targeting Boston University students, after the University wrote to the Court saying that it could not identify three of the John Does 'to a reasonable degree of technical certainty,' Judge Nancy Gertner deemed the University's letter a 'motion to quash,' and granted it, quashing the subpoena as to those defendants. In the very brief docket entry (PDF) containing her decision, she noted that 'compliance with the subpoena as to the IP addresses represented by these Defendants would expose innocent parties to intrusive discovery.' There is an important lesson to be learned from this ruling: if the IT departments of the colleges and universities targeted by the RIAA would be honest, and explain to the Courts the problems with the identification and other technical issues, there is a good chance the subpoenas will be vacated. Certainly, there is now a judicial precedent for that principle. One commentator asks whether this holding 'represents the death knell to some, if not all, of the RIAA's efforts to use American university staff as copyright cops.'"

Barack Obama Wins US Presidency 3709

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday November 05, 2008 @09:30AM from the enough-of-that-now-this dept.

Last night, around 11pm, all the major networks announced that Senator Barack Obama had won the election. Soon after, Senator McCain conceded. There were no crazy partisan court hearings, just a simple election. This is your chance to talk about it and what it means for the future of our nation.

Ted "A Series of Tubes" Stevens Found Guilty 565

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday October 27, 2008 @05:18PM from the now-a-series-of-cells dept.

techmuse writes "According to a series of tubes sites, Senator Ted Stevens has been found guilty of lying about free home renovations that he received from an oil contractor. He faces up to 5 years in jail, and the outcome of his current reelection bid is now in doubt. 'The conviction came after a tumultuous week in the jury room. First there were complaints about an unruly juror, then another had to be replaced when she left Washington following the death of her father. Finally, jurors on Monday discovered a discrepancy in the indictment that had been overlooked by prosecutors. Jury deliberations in this historic trial have at times been as contentious as some of the proceedings The Justice Department indicted Stevens on July 29, and the Alaska Republican took a huge legal gamble and asked for a speedy trial in order to resolve the charges before Election Day. Judge Emmet Sullivan complied with Stevens' request, and in less than three months from the time of his indictment, Stevens was found guilty.'"

Should You Break TOS Because Work Asks You? 680

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday October 27, 2008 @09:13AM from the just-don't-crawl-this-domain-please dept.

An anonymous reader writes "My boss recently assigned me a project that was all his idea, with two basic flaws that would require me to break multiple web sites' Terms of Service (TOS). Part requires scraping most of the site, parsing the data and presenting it as our own without human intervention. While we're safe on copyright issues, clearly scraping like this is normally not allowed. At times it might also put a load on those sites. The other is, for lack of better words, a 'load balancing' part that requires using multiple free accounts instead of purchasing space and CPU time for less than $2,000 USD per month. The boss sees it as 'distributed' computing when in reality it's 'parasitic.' My question is: am I wrong about the ethics? If I do need to walk, how best can I handle it without damaging my reputation and future employment opportunities?"

Why RAID 5 Stops Working In 2009 803

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday October 21, 2008 @07:03PM from the back-'em-up-rawhide dept.

Lally Singh recommends a ZDNet piece predicting the imminent demise of RAID 5, noting that increasing storage and non-decreasing probability of disk failure will collide in a year or so. This reader adds, "Apparently, RAID 6 isn't far behind. I'll keep the ZFS plug short. Go ZFS. There, that was it." "Disk drive capacities double every 18-24 months. We have 1 TB drives now, and in 2009 we'll have 2 TB drives. With a 7-drive RAID 5 disk failure, you'll have 6 remaining 2 TB drives. As the RAID controller is busily reading through those 6 disks to reconstruct the data from the failed drive, it is almost certain it will see an [unrecoverable read error]. So the read fails ... The message 'we can't read this RAID volume' travels up the chain of command until an error message is presented on the screen. 12 TB of your carefully protected — you thought! — data is gone. Oh, you didn't back it up to tape? Bummer!"

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