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Television

Submission + - Mythbusters to test cockroaches radiation myth (tri-cityherald.com)

redwoodtree writes: "As the article quotes so perfectly "Contrary to popular belief, not a significant amount of research goes into cockroach radiation" so the Mythbusters are going out to Hanford Site where plutonium was manufactured for the first nuclear bomb. It's the single most polluted nuclear waste site in the U.S. The Mythbusters are going to take cockroaches and other insects and apply successively higher doses of radiation in a controlled setting. One group of insects will not be exposed to any radiation of course. It turns out that the facility is used to test radiation on electronic equipment, power lines and so forth. It's comforting that all the nuclear waste is being put to some good use before it all washes down into the Columbia river."
Television

Submission + - Colbert enters the Presidential Race

zstlaw writes: "As red, white and blue balloons fell around him, Stephen Colbert announced his candidacy for president on 'The Colbert Report'. He went on to claim he will only run in South Carolina where he has roots. In a typical Colbert fashion he claimed he would run as Democrat and Republican so that he could lose twice.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hFzxF7XLwi7Il2DVEE6la0NVo — gD8SB07VO0

While the candidacy appears to be tongue-in-cheek, with Colbert's sizable audience even a tongue in cheek candidacy could pull a large number of young voters whom are unsatisfied with other candidates. How do you think this may effect the already crowded field?"
Media

Submission + - Radiohead Made $6-$10 Million on Album (wired.com)

mytrip writes: "Thom Yorke's representative told me that the band have "decided not to give out any figures" for sales of Radiohead's In Rainbows album, but that isn't stopping people from making their best guesses based on what little information is available.

The Seminal estimates that Radiohead sold about $10 million-worth of albums as of 10/12, assuming that their source was correct that approximately 1.2 million people downloaded the album from the site, and that the average price paid per album was $8 (we heard that number too, but also heard that a later, more accurate average was $5, which would result in $6 million in revenue instead)."

Linux Business

Submission + - Debating the economics of Windows-Linux migration (interopnews.com)

AlexGr writes: "Jeff Gould has a post in Interop News about the difficult economics of Windows-to-Linux desktop migrations in big organizations like government agencies. The most interesting point is that while Linux migration may not make much financial sense short term, in the long term — or very long term — the switch can yield cost savings by virtue of the fact that it breaks Microsoft's proprietary lock-in. In other words, you pay through the teeth to move to Linux now, but you get that investment back eventually because you no longer have to pay monopoly rent to Microsoft. This argument makes perfect sense, but economic theory and empirical observation of real-world software industry behavior both suggest that it might not work in practice. http://www.interopnews.com/news/debating-the-economics-of-windows-to-linux-migration.html"
Security

Submission + - Stolen laptop = free beer (as in beer)

Jivecat writes: "CNN reports on a New Zealand brewery that had a laptop stolen containing all the company's financials. The co-owner of Croucher Brewing Co. has offered 'a dozen bottles of beer a month for... life' to whoever recovers the laptop. In a neighbourly gesture, a New Zealand winemaker offered the suggestion that the brewery make its reward terms very specific, to avoid any 'difficult legal wrangle.'"
Windows

Standard Web Fonts 'Updated' In Vista 452

BladesP9 writes "Beginning with Vista, Microsoft has updated the standard Web Core Fonts that it has used since the late 1990s. 'With the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft has unleashed something quite new on the Web — the "C" fonts; Cambria, Calibri, Candara, Consolas, Constantia, and Corbel.' The article goes on to state that 'if you're a web designer and not using Vista then this download is mandatory since it will let you see your page as your Vista users see it.' The article includes a PDF document offering visual comparisons of the old and new fonts (pdf)."
Networking

Submission + - Hosting your own website 1

GPTelemann writes: As an almost-grad-student in computer engineering who's been using cheap webhosting services, I figured that I should be able to use an older computer lying around to run my own Linux webserver. I've used Linux from time to time since before the days of Debian 2.0, and Ubuntu seems to be very popular these days. Unfortunately, I don't really know how to go about setting up a simple, secure webserver on my local internet connection. What things are most important to know, and where should I look to learn how to go about this (and how to get an already-registered domain to link to my computer)?
The Internet

Submission + - Small Developers (insidefacebook.com)

jbiesi writes: An independent developer that I've worked with in the past created a little app using the new facebook API's, but he never saw that the response could be so huge. Now in addition to the all the questions about how he can maintain and improve his work, he is also facing questions to buy his app and offer him jobs. Can anyone in the slashdot community offer him advice/moral support?
NASA

Journal SPAM: No Boom today

Shuttle had to land in CA due to weather. Too bad. What's a couple more million and a few days though? It's just government money.

HP

Submission + - Data Center Disaster and Recovery (hp.com) 1

John -- on behalf of HP writes: "Nothing is indestructible — but that doesn't mean you have to loose what's important when disaster strikes. To prove this very important point, HP recently simulated a gas leak and used explosives to blow up a datacenter, which included the entire spectrum of HP products, including StorageWorks, servers, software and Procurve solutions. What resulted was the flawless fail-over of every system with full IT services up and running in 13 seconds to less than 2 minutes. Take a look at the destruction here: http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/523434- 0-0-0-121.html"
Security

Submission + - Session Management Security Hole in Orkut (grok.org.uk)

tomcataxis writes: You login to Orkut and network with your friends everyday and then you finally log out. But do you really log out? What does logging out mean? Logging out means you have closed your account. Your account is accessible to none, not even to you unless you authenticate yourself with your username and password once again. Apparently logging out has a different meaning for Orkut. When you log out of Orkut, not only can you use your account without authenticating yourself but attackers and the bad guys can also use your account without even knowing your user name and password. Yes! That's true! They don't need your user name to hijack your account. Then what do they need? 3 Indian hackers Susam Pal, Vipul Agarwal and Gaurav Mogre have disclosed a security hole in Orkut that can be exploited to compromise an account if certain Orkut cookies are stolen and the account can be used even after the owner of the account has logged out.

The following are the steps to protect yourself.

1. A user logged into Orkut should not run any untrusted JavaScript,
      program, etc. or click on any suspicious link to prevent the cookie
      from being stolen.
2. On a shared system, the user must log out of Orkut by clicking the
      "Logout" link. This would delete the session cookies at the browser
      and another user can not read the cookie value from the browser.
      Alternatively, the cookie can be removed from the browser.

Click the title above to read the complete report.

Linux Business

Submission + - Best open-source virtualisation solution?

wikinerd writes: "I am looking for a fast virtualisation solution supporting Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 64bit with file-based storage or LVM. Apart from speed and OS, my other requirements are that the project must be released as free software under GPL or open-source under BSDL or similar licence, and that the project must be developed by a strictly non-commercial 'hacker-ethics' community. I am using Xen at the moment, and it works great, but I wish to keep my eyes open for any other alternatives satisfying my criteria. What would you suggest?"

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