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Comment Bacula open source comunity edition (Score 1) 283

by BitPit1 (#61136374) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Do You Use for Backups at Home?
I use https://www.bacula.org/free-li... to backup computers on my home network and store the backup files on computers other than the one being backed up. I create incrementals daily for 2 weeks, differentials weekly for 5 weeks and full backups monthly for a year. It is easy to get files accidentally deleted or modified using the command line with ascii menus. Often when I break my system the window system may not work so I consider this a plus. No cloud is involved, only the local network (LAN). Bacula sends me daily short emails (OK or intervention required) about each system's backup.

Comment Arpanet didn't have much spam at first ... (Score 1) 64

by BitPit1 (#59195480) Attached to: Was Advertising in Open Source Software a Useful Experiment?
I started using the internet when it was called arpanet. You did not send unsolicited emails to many people. I accidentally sent a message to a group that was not relevant. I got harsh replies from most of the members and felt bad about my error. Now email is extremely abused on the internet.

Open source code must not display unrelated messages of any kind. Otherwise the result will be spam just like email. It is up to us developers to squash this right now.

Comment Like tax preparation software. (Score 1) 227

by BitPit1 (#54198277) Attached to: Should The FBI Have Arrested 'The Hacker Who Hacked No One'?
RAT is just like TurboTax. Each has an intended purpose (Remote Administration / Tax Filing). Each can be used by criminals (unauthorized system administration for ransom / filing another person's taxes for refund). Poor business decisions about where to promote your product for maximum intended purpose sales is not a crime. Improper use of the product is a crime.

Comment Mythtv on gentoo linux (Score 1) 236

by BitPit1 (#50776781) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What's Your Media Setup?
Mythtv, antenna, 3 ATSC tuners, 8TB raid storage, OTA Program Guide, no subscriptions to anything. Picture and sound are not degraded by cable company compression. Commercial skip in mythtv is pretty good. I don't know how I could watch TV without it as commercials are inserted at critical points in dramas. Live sports is great delayed at the start by an hour or more. I can skip right over half time and 30 second time outs too. I'll never run out of new (to me) programming. I have some series that I have never watched.

Submission + - Why is Google Opening a New Data Center in a Former Coal-Fired Power Plant?

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Quentin Hardy reports at the NY Times that Google just announced that it is opening its 14th data center inside a former coal-fired power plant in Stevenson, Alabama. While there is considerable irony in taking over a coal-burning plant and promoting alternative power, there are pragmatic reasons Google would want to put a $600 million data center in such a facility. These power facilities are typically large and solid structures with good power lines. The Alabama plant is next to a reservoir on the Tennessee River with access to lots of water, which Google uses for cooling its computers. There are also rail lines into the facility, which makes it likely Google can access buried conduits along the tracks to run fiber-optic cable. In Finland, Google rehabilitated a paper mill, and uses seawater for cooling. Salt water is corrosive for standard metal pipes, of course, so Google created a singular cooling system using plastic pipes. Once fully operational, Google's Alabama data center will employ up to 75 employees in a variety of full-time and contractor roles, including computer technicians, engineers, and various food services, maintenance and security roles. "This a fantastic and exciting day for Jackson County," says Jackson County Commission Chair Matthew Hodges.

Submission + - U.S. tech giants ask Obama not to compromise encryption (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Two industry bodies which represent, among others, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and IBM have written [http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/09/us-cybersecurity-usa-encryption-idUSKBN0OP09R20150609] to President Obama urging that the U.S. government not seek to legislate 'official back doors' into encryption techniques. The Software and Information Industry Association and the Information Technology Industry Council sent the 'strongly worded' letter on Monday, celaring "Consumer trust in digital products and services is an essential component enabling continued economic growth of the online marketplace...Accordingly, we urge you not to pursue any policy or proposal that would require or encourage companies to weaken these technologies, including the weakening of encryption or creating encryption 'work-arounds,"

Comment This looks like another tracker. (Score 4, Insightful) 351

by BitPit1 (#49877367) Attached to: Mozilla Responds To Firefox User Backlash Over Pocket Integration
Pocket should not be built in to Firefox as it is yet another third party that gets to capture your browser usage. Good old bookmarks have the same function without involving some unknown third party. I do not want the Pocket feature taking up resources on my computer! Leave it as an addon for folks that can't figure out how to use bookmarks.
Medicine

Submission + - The better to see you with (patexia.com)

Submitted by
ericjones12398
ericjones12398 writes: "Unlike the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, doctors wanting to get a good look inside you are developing ever-smaller “eyes” to do the job. Even as dimensions shrink, other improvements bring qualitatively better sight to the instruments, allowing doctors to conclusively diagnose ulcers, inflammatory bowel disease and cancers. These improvements were recently on display and demonstration this week in San Diego, Calif., at the annual Digestive Disease Week (DDW) meeting, attended by gastroenterologists from around the US and world.
Narrow Band Imaging (NBI)
The traditional endoscope consists of a soft, flexible tube with a light and lens on one end and an eyepiece on the other for the doctor — or, more likely, for the digital imaging device the doctor is using. The light used on the distal end of the endoscope, inside the patient, has typically been a full-spectrum source. By contrast, NBI endoscopes use only selected wavelengths of the white light spectrum, from 415 nanometers (blue) to 540 nanometers (green). By dropping out the red wavelengths, small blood vessels become more visible and, hence, so do smaller, newly emerging lesions, such as precancerous polyps of the colon."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Suffers Yet Another .Net Patch Failure (infoworld.com)

Submitted by snydeq
snydeq writes: Microsoft has encountered another .Net patching failure, as three automatic updates failed to install on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 and were later pulled. Microsoft has avoided explaining why so many PCs and servers were affected by the three patches — KB 2518864, KB 2572073, and KB 2633880 — and only recently have users been able to piece together a workaround. The failure is reminiscent of last month's .Net Framework patching debacle, where many people couldn't print their TurboTax forms over the tax weekend.
NASA

Submission + - NASA to future lunar explorers: Don't mess with our Moon stuff (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: NASA today gently reminded any future Moon explorers that any relics of its Apollo missions or other US lunar artifacts should be off limits and are considered historic sites. NASA issued the reminder in conjunction with the X Prize Foundation and its Google Lunar X Prize competition which will use NASA's Moon sites guidelines as it sifts through the 26 team currently developing systems and spacecraft to land on the Moon.
Science

Submission + - New GM Crops Could Make Superweeds Even Stronger (wired.com)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Now that Monsanto and others have created a new breed of superweed that is resistant to herbicides, the next step is to genetically modify crop plants to resist super doses of more chemicals, which in turn will create super weeds resistant to entire CLASSES of chemicals, which in turn...you get the idea. This is ridiculous.
Security

Submission + - ShowIP Firefox add-on secretly leaks URL data (sophos.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to researchers at Sophos, a popular Firefox add-on appears to have started leaking private information about every website that users visit to a third-party server, including sensitive data which could identify individuals or reduce their security.

ShowIP is designed to "show the IP address(es) of the current page in the status bar" and is used by over 170,000 Firefox users.

However, the full URL of every webpage visited is sent to the Germany-based ip2info.org website, using unencrypted connections.

In addition, the add-on has no warning that sites you visit might be disclosed, no privacy policy small print explaining its behaviour, and no apparent way to opt-out of the data-sharing.

Submission + - Scam artist Naveen Jain is doing it again. (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: He waited some years to be forgotten, but this scam artist is about to take another company public and is going to screw his investors after the IPO.

Submission + - An Open Letter To Developers of Ad Blocking Software (itproportal.com) 1

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: John Battelle, CEO Federated Media Publishing sends out an open letter to Developers of Ad Blocking Applications: Dear Developers of Ad Blocking applications, I'll cut straight to the chase. What have we done to you to deserve your wrath? The ad blockers that you design prevent our ads from being displayed. Less advertising means less revenue for producing the quality content that you and everybody else craves and needs. High quality online content allows readers all over the world to educate and better themselves, without incurring any relative costs. Think about it: without online advertising where would the Internet be? Every site that depends on display advertising and page views would find it very hard to make ends meet. Producing good content is generally a very expensive procedure. As it stands, the overwhelming majority of the traditional (by traditional, I mean those who make a living out of writing) online content community works using the following equation.

Monthly Revenue = average advert slots per page x total number of page views x average cost per advert impression

Decreasing any of the variables on the right hand side will decrease revenue on the left hand side. And preventing adverts from displaying can have a devastating effect on the online media ecosystem, directly affecting web designers, journalists, editors, copywriters, developers, sales people, operations teams etc.

"When advertising works, millions keep their jobs" — Reader's Digest Ad

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