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Portables

An alternative portable to MacBook Pros

Submitted by
akutz
akutz writes "I use OS X and a 15" Macbook Pro, however, due to recent concerns on my part (and re-reading "In the Beginning There was the Command Line for the umpteenth time), I am interested in moving to Linux as my full time desktop OS (it's already my server OS). Yet, I'm flummoxed. I love my Macbook Pro, and I cannot imagine not having this beautiful piece of hardware in front of me when I am surfing the interwebs. But if I pay the Apple tax for the hardware I'm likely going to use OS X because aside from the philosophical desire to forward free and open software, OS X works really well and I'll probably end up using it since I have the license. I would like to know what notebooks Slashdot readers think are comparable to Macbook Pros in not only their function, but also their form."
Censorship

A Black Day For Internet Freedom In Germany 420

Posted by kdawson
from the sun-going-down dept.
Several readers including erlehmann and tmk wrote to inform us about the dawning of Internet censorship in Germany under the usual guise of protecting the children. "This week, the two big political parties ruling Germany in a coalition held the final talks on their proposed Internet censorship scheme. DNS queries for sites on a list will be given fake answers that lead to a page with a stop sign. The list itself is maintained by the German federal police (Bundeskriminalamt). A protest movement has formed over the course of the last several months, and over 130K citizens have signed a petition protesting the law. Despite this, and despite criticism from all sides, the two parties sped up the process for the law to be signed on Thursday, June 18, 2009."
Businesses

Ideal, and Actual, IT Performance Metrics? 321

Posted by timothy
from the spin-the-dial-shake-the-8-ball dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Recently it was revealed that our company measures IT performance by the time it takes to close trouble tickets. I consider IT's primary goal to be as transparent to the user as possible, thus this metric was rather troubling to me. Shouldn't we be focused on reducing calls, rather than simply closing them quickly? My question is: How is your IT performance measured, and how do you think it should be measured?"
Moon

NASA To Trigger Massive Explosion On the Moon In Search of Ice 376

Posted by timothy
from the smashing-darling-smashing dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "NASA is preparing to launch the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, which will fly a Centaur rocket booster into the moon, triggering a six-mile-high explosion that scientists hope will confirm whether water is frozen in the perpetual darkness of craters near the moon's south pole. If the spacecraft launches on schedule at 12:51 p.m. Wednesday, it will hit the moon in the early morning hours of October 8 after an 86-day Lunar Gravity-Assist, Lunar Return Orbit that will allow the spacecraft time to complete its two-month commissioning phase and conduct nearly a month of science data collection of polar crater measurements before colliding with the moon just 10 minutes behind the Centaur." (Continues, below.)
Censorship

China's Green Dam, No Longer Compulsory, May Have Lifted Code 116

Posted by timothy
from the when-the-levee-breaks dept.
LionMage writes "Much has been made previously of how China's Green Dam software must be installed on all new PCs in China, and of more recent revelations that the software may create exploitable security vulnerabilities or even provide the Chinese government with a ready-made botnet to use for potentially nefarious purposes. (One of those prior articles even discusses how Green Dam incorporates blacklists from CyberSitter.) Now the BBC is reporting that Solid Oak's CyberSitter software may have had more than just a compiled blacklist lifted from it. Solid Oak is claiming that actual pieces of their code somehow ended up in Green Dam. From PC Magazine's article: 'Solid Oak Software, the developer of CyberSitter, claims that the look and feel of the GUI used by Green Dam mimics the style of CyberSitter. But more damning, chief executive Brian Milburn said, was the fact that the Green Dam code uses DLLs identified with the CyberSitter name, and even makes calls back to Solid Oak's servers for updates.'" Relatedly, reader Spurious Logic writes that Green Dam won't be mandatory after all, according to an unnamed official with China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

I request a weekend in Havana with Phil Silvers!