Crispin Cowan - Slashdot User

Submission + - Facebook Maxes Out Its Data Center Space (facebook.com)

Submitted by

1sockchuck

on Sunday December 23, 2007 @09:50PM

1sockchuck writes: "Facebook is adding 2 million new users a week, and recently maxed out the data center space at its California facilities. The load on the company's servers "continues to increase at a pretty astounding rate," says Facebook engineer Jason Sobel, who said the fast-growing social networking service has added a data center in Virginia, which is now serving 30 percent of its traffic. Sobel also discusses how Facebook sorts out which data gets stored on the East Coast and West Coast, which has meant some fine-tuning of its MySQL code to properly update Memcached."

Submission + - Google Reader shares private data, ruins Christmas (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Felipe Hoffa on Sunday December 23, 2007 @08:49PM

Felipe Hoffa writes: One week ago Google Reader's team decided showing your private data to all your GMail contacts. No need to opt-in, no way to opt-out. Complaints haven't been answered. Some users share their problems, including one family that won't be able to enjoy this Christmas due to this "feature". Will this start happening with all Google products?

You can check a summary of complaints or the whole thread.

Submission + - OLPC a hit in remote Peruvian village (chicagotribune.com)

Submitted by

mrcgran

on Sunday December 23, 2007 @08:20PM

mrcgran writes: "Chicago Tribune is running a story about the effects of OLPC on a remote village in Peru: "Doubts about whether poor, rural children really can benefit from quirky little computers evaporate as quickly as the morning dew in this hilltop Andean village, where 50 primary school children got machines from the One Laptop Per Child project six months ago. At breakfast, they're already powering up the combination library/videocam/audio recorder/music maker/drawing kits. At night, they're dozing off in front of them — if they've managed to keep older siblings from waylaying the coveted machines. Peru made the single biggest order to date — more than 272,000 machines — in its quest to turn around a primary education system that the World Economic Forum recently ranked last among 131 countries surveyed." A detailed log has been kept and a youtube video is also available."

Submission + - Palau looking into satellite power in next decade

Submitted by davidwr on Sunday December 23, 2007 @07:55PM

davidwr writes: The island nation of Palau is looking into creating a satellite-to-ground power transmission system. The system will use low-orbit satellites to transmit power to a receiver in bursts, unlike some other plans which rely on geostationary satellites. The initial 1MW project is supposed to go online "as early as" 2012 for a cost of $0.8B. Time will tell if this is cost-effective compared to traditional solar or other sources of power.

Submission + - Network technician checklist; it goes to eleven. (wordpress.com)

Submitted by Sak on Sunday December 23, 2007 @06:18PM

Sak writes: For those of you wondering how to make it as a sysadmin in the world, Bootslack has posted an entertaining checklist on his blog discussing how a network technician can survive their day to day routine, and ultimately ensure job security.

Submission + - Fake Steve Jobs getting sued by Apple is a HOAX (applegazette.com)

Submitted by themurph2099 on Sunday December 23, 2007 @05:42PM

themurph2099 writes: Earlier today both Slashdot and Digg have had articles promoted to their front pages that cover the story of the Fake Steve Jobs being threatened by Apple over "trade secrets". There have been several posts on Fake Steve's blog, and the entire thing has been played out like it is real. There's only one problem...it's not.

Submission + - What are the best network monitoring programs? 1

Submitted by Ace on Sunday December 23, 2007 @05:08PM

Ace writes: What are the best programs to keep track of all the IP addresses of incoming and outgoing connections that are connecting to your computer? I've been using firewall software but lately I've discovered strange anomolous connections to .ru sites that I can't explan (and I've run virus scan, have firewall, etc). I'd really like to find a package that logs a list of all sites, their IP's, etc (incoming and outgoing) and which program is doing it. I'd like not to have to reformat but it's looking likely.

Submission + - Tens of Thousands of Adult Website Accounts Hacked (www.icwt.us) 3

Submitted by

Keith

on Sunday December 23, 2007 @04:02PM

Keith writes: "Tens of thousands — or maybe more — accounts to adult websites were recently declared compromised and apparently have been that way since sometime in October, 2007. The issue occurred when the NATS software used to track and manage sales and affiliate revenues was accessed by an intruder, who apparently discovered a list of admin passwords residing on an unsecured office server at Too Much Media, which makes and maintains NATS installations for adult companies. It would appear that Too Much Media knew of the exploit back in October, and rather than fixing the issue tried to bury it by threatening to sue anyone in the adult industry who talked about it."

Submission + - Mystery Company recruiting puzzle solved! 1

Submitted by

srealm

on Sunday December 23, 2007 @02:46PM

srealm writes: "Less than 24 hours from posting, the Mystery Company job posting has been cracked! With the collaboration of people at the Google Group setup specifically for cracking this puzzle, the three 'challenges' have been solved, and the company un-masked as N-Brain, Inc in Boulder, CO. The date in question is the release date for their flagship UNA product, meant to promote collaborative development."

Submission + - FSFE Supports Microsoft Antitrust Investigation (linuxelectrons.com)

Submitted by

on Sunday December 23, 2007 @01:38PM

An anonymous reader writes: "Microsoft should be required openly, fully and faithfully to implement free and open industry standards," is the message of a letter by the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) to European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes. To help achieve this goal, FSFE offered its support for a possible antitrust investigation based on the complaint of Opera Software against Microsoft. The complaint was based on anti-competitive behaviour in the web browser market.

"Although Opera Software does not produce Free Software, we largely share their assessment and concerns regarding the present situation in the Internet browser market", FSFE president Georg Greve writes in the letter.

Submission + - Netgear introduces Linux based NAS devices (linuxdevices.com)

Submitted by drewmoney on Sunday December 23, 2007 @01:25PM

drewmoney writes: A LinuxDevices.com article introduces several of Netgear's Linux based NAS devices. These come in a 1.5TB model, all the way up to a 4TB rackmount version. These are geared towards the professional home user, and small and medium businesses. Comes complete with the usual RAID features, file system access and a built in USB print server. All are controlled through a WebGUI and some even have SSH access.

Submission + - Engadget exposes latest Lyon's hoax (engadget.com)

Submitted by

walterbyrd

on Sunday December 23, 2007 @01:10PM

walterbyrd writes: "Seems like Dan (Lyin') Lyons may have made fools of slashdot readers. Not only is there no evidence that Apple threatened and/or attempted Dan Lyons; but the entire thing seems like another Lyon's hoax, according the Engadget Article."

Submission + - Windows XP driver support begins to end (blorge.com) 3

Submitted by

thefickler

on Friday December 21, 2007 @07:26PM

thefickler writes: "It's official, manufacturers are starting to dump Windows XP support entirely and some new models won't even have Windows XP drivers or any kind of support available, anywhere. One reader, "Mark" contacted TECH.BLORGE regarding installing Windows XP on his HP V6610 (Australian) laptop which is the V6620 in the US. "Mark" said when he went to the HP driver/downloads section that very few Windows XP drivers were available for it and he was right, there were almost no useful drivers for the laptop there. His call to HP support didn't get very far as "HP is no longer supporting Windows XP on the newer PCs.""

Submission + - 'More sex needed' to boost sperm (fun-on.com)

Submitted by

tapiros

on Friday December 21, 2007 @07:17PM

tapiros writes: "Some men should have sex every day to maximise the chances of getting their partner pregnant, researchers say. It is known for couples with fertility problems to abstain from sex for several days to boost sperm numbers before trying to conceive. However, the Sydney University team, addressing the American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference, said this could mean poorer quality sperm. One UK expert said daily sex might be better for men with damaged sperm. The Australian scientists studied 42 men whose sperm had been found to be an abnormal shape when examined under the microscope. They were told to ejaculate daily for seven days, and these samples were compared with those taken from them after three days' abstinence. All but five of the men had less sperm damage in their daily samples compared with the post-abstention sample. Fertility myth Dr Allan Pacey, the secretary of the British Fertility Society, said that while not having sex allowed the numbers of sperm to build up, there was a "trade-off" between quality and quantity. "This research shows that when you put people on a daily ejaculation regime, it reduces the figure for DNA damage. "If you can go from 30% to 20% that is quite a big shift and that should have some implications for fertility. "There are men out there who think, or whose partners think, that limiting ejaculation will make them more fertile. "I remember one couple in which the woman would only let the man ejaculate when she was in her fertile period, so the poor chap was going without for almost a month at a time." that if a couple was initially trying to get pregnant, an interval of two to three days was probably advisable — whereas a man with high DNA damage and a "decent" sperm count should try more often."

Submission + - Vulnerability Numerology: Defective by Design?

Submitted by rdmreader on Friday December 21, 2007 @12:50AM

rdmreader writes: RDM has a point by point disassembly of why the security vulnerability story George Ou of ZDnet regularly rehashes is wrong. Ou condemns Linux and Mac OS X by tallying up reported flaws and comparing them against Microsoft's. What he doesn't note is that his source, Secunia, only lists what vendors and researchers report, selectively includes or excludes component software seemingly at random, and backhandedly claimed its data is evidence of what it now tells journalists they shouldn't report. Is Secunia presenting slanted information with the expectation it will be misused, or is it just bad journalism at ZDnet?

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