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Censorship

Submission + - Chicago student arrested for writing violent essay

Submitted by
Amalex5
Amalex5 writes: "After Columbine, school administrators suspended numerous students around the country for turning in violent writing, but a school district in Chicago has responded to the Virginia Tech massacre by going a step further: arresting a student who responded to the creative writing assignment "Write whatever comes to your mind. Do not judge or censor what you are writing" by writing a story about violence, video-games and necrophilia. The student was charged with disorderly conduct, which carries a fine of up to $1500 and up 30 days in jail, and is usually used for people who pull fire alarms maliciously or make prank 911 calls. The local police chief said that the charge also applies "when someone's writings disturb an individual.""
Google

Submission + - Comcast Unhappy with Google, Talking to Microsoft

Submitted by
Bob Caswell
Bob Caswell writes: "Comcast is negotiating with Microsoft to replace Google search on the Comcast.net portal. Comcast.net receives 15 million visitors per month and is one of the biggest non-Google sources of search queries handled by Google. Comcast is under contract with Google till the end of this year but is less than satisfied for the following reasons:"
XBox (Games)

Submission + - Xbox live servers hacked?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: A recent post to the Full-Disclosure mailing list spreads the rumour that "Bungie.net was hacked and that a portion of Xbox live has been taken over because of it. Some folks are having their Microsoft points stolen and or points purchased via their stolen gamer tag." Furthermore, the post quotes a MS Tech: "Hackers have control of Xbox live and there is nothing we can do about it"
Biotech

Submission + - Coke and Pepsi Cook Your Liver?

Submitted by beartenor1
beartenor1 writes: Science Daily is reporting that a team from the University of Barcelona (UB) has recently published a study in the journal Hepatology which provides clues to the molecular mechanism through which the fructose in beverages may alter lipid energy metabolism and cause fatty liver and metabolic syndrome. Is it time to ban high-fructose corn syrup?
The Internet

Submission + - Splenda Killed My Dog

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The maker of the chemical sweetener Splenda preemptively registered chillingly expressive domains such as SplendaPoison.com, SplendaKills.net, VictimsofSplenda.com, SplendaToxicity.com and SplendaAlert.com. Do they know something that we don't?

http://www.dailydomainer.com/2007107-splenda-kille d-my-dog.html
Security

Submission + - OpenBSD second remote hole flames on mailing list.

Submitted by
Josh Stonham
Josh Stonham writes: "A second remote hole was found last week in OpenBSD, and thanks to the developers, it was patched in a very timely manner, kudos to them.

After it was updated in the errata page, an announcement was also made in the OpenBSD's miscellaneous mailing list.

However, a flame war between OpenBSD users and Theo & Theo's loyalties has almost immediately initiated on the thread in misc. since the announcement never made its way to the security-acouncement mailing list.[1] [2] [3]

Some of Theo's responses: [1] [2] [3] And the reaction of users: [4]

Majordomo at lists.openbsd.org reports 11323 subscribers to security-announce and only 3866 for misc. Correct or not, it is reasonable to assume security-announce is the important one to watch for most people"
Editorial

Submission + - Is GNU/Linux for you? Probably not

Submitted by FranklinDelanoBluth
FranklinDelanoBluth writes: Sam Varghese has an article at iTWire about why Linux may not be for you: either at work or at home. The article includes this special shoutout to /. folk:

From time to time, it is not uncommon to encounter a confession on the net, a bleating essay that says "I can't run Linux, though I'd love to", and advances a host of assorted "reasons" for this act of commission.

Nine times out of ten, this kind of tripe ends up being linked off a dozen or so so-called technology websites, and Linux fanbois begin to vent. The site where one is most likely to find this kind of "I love Linux but I can't use it for no fault of my own" rubbish is the American website Slashdot.


Though I personally think his reasoning might be a bit circular (e.g. the argument that Windows-only apps are a reason not to change, but if no one ever switches to GNU/Linux, no GNU/Linux apps will be developed...), he does make some interesting points about the guilt that many of us may feel when we aren't able to use Linux as a primary OS.
Desktops (Apple)

Submission + - What happaned to the clones?

Submitted by Noishe
Noishe writes: We all know about running windows on a Macintosh with bootcamp, but what about running MacOS on an intel machine?

Apple computers are using standard harddrives, video cards, ram, and CPU's.

Does anyone have any experience with getting OSX up and running on an otherwise normal PC? Why haven't motherboard manufacturors introduced clone boards just like they did in the 80's for pc's?
Software

Submission + - How NOT to update your systems.

Submitted by
Ardeocalidus
Ardeocalidus writes: "So here I sit, in Albany airport; I have been delayed by four hours, attempting to board my third attempt at a flight to Albany. I rush to the new terminal, after having been switched 30 minutes before the flight, only to find that my flight has been delayed another forty minutes. Being a veteren of airline incompetence, this shouldn't surprise me. Well, not until my fourth stand-by of the evening.

Why the delay? After talking with the check-in representative at the gate, following his hurried boarding of the passengers and the subsequent angry yelps by those who couldn't get on the flight, I begin to piece together the story. Apparently, at Midnight (EST) on Sunday morning U.S. Airways attempted to update the entirety of its representative and maintnence software repertoire with a "new and improved" version (as it always is). The key component to the day? The software is buggy and their massive role-out has only served to aggitate an already busy travel day.

The representative, Clinton, is flabergasted at the new software. All throughout the boarding procedure, it caused his terminal to constantly lockup (permitting the procedure to last a lengthy twenty minutes for a small, dual-rotor plane). Additionally, the events of the morning have caused a domino effect, causing flights to be overbooked and in many cases canceled.

Clinton is nice enough to give me a stand-by ticket on the next flight to Albany, and hour and a half following my original departure time. In case I am unable to board as a stand-by passenger on this next flight, he also confirmed my ticket on an 8:35 flight to Albany. Begrudgingly, I shuffle onto the shuttle and make my way to the other terminal.

It is essentially the same story, yet with more stand-by passengers than the first flight (I counted a total of 8) and screwups on the pavement below. At one point, two of the baggage attendents came up off of the deck and through the gateway to ask the flight representative how they should fit one-hundred and seventy-five pieces of baggage onto a jet designed to hold eighty at most. I spoke with a baggage attendent (who also happened to be a standby passenger on the flight [ironically, as was another captain; in addition to the 8 conventional passengers]) who enlightened me as to the cause of the incidents below. Apparantly U.S. Airways changed the formatting of the baggage manifests without training the baggage attendents. Additionally, the flight representative who was attempting to check the number of passengers currently aboard the flight couldn't do so through her terminal (She frustratingly pointed out that she had the ability just 21 hours prior) and had to board the jet to do a physical headcount. It then took another fifteen minutes (and two managers and a member of the technical staff) for her to alert six out of the eight stand-by passengers that they would not be able to board the flight.

At this point I realized I was powerless. I had little ability to do anything about my situation. I had already missed the shuttle which would have taken my to my university and would have to figure out some other mode of transportation once I arrived in Albany; If I arrived in Albany. I somberly made my way across the airport to the new terminal, taking slight comfort in the fact that I was "confirmed" on this flight. Realizing I hadn't eaten, I purchased a sandwhich a Sbarro and sat down to contemplate the day and my future transportation issues. From my auditory peripheral I overhead two (what I suppose where) U.S. Airways flight attendents conversing about the quagmire in Charlotte. From what I gathered, the software issue in Charlotte had been so convoluted as to cause massive flight cancellations. This was confirmed when I arrived at my final gate (after having been moved) and seeing the "Charlotte gate" displaying a red, menacing cancellation notice.

So I sit here in Albany contemplating the idiocy of U.S. Airways. In my humble opinion, this is not the way to rollout new software, especially if it is integral to the operating of your airlines and the proper booking of your passengers. You certainly don't update on the weekends. It would have caused much less of a stir had they attempted to update their systems on a week day. They most likely wouldn't have the hordes of standby passengers demanding compensation (which they refused to give to most) and the massively overbooked flights. If they are giving compensation, then I would reckon to state that performing an update to their system on a week day would have saved them some money (especially in relation to the cancelled flights out of Charlotte).

I certainly don't know the specifics of the systems update or the reasoning behind it (nor can I find anyone with such knowledge), but I can only extrapolate that, due to the day and the time, that the update had something to do with the new Federal DST mandate ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Policy_Act_of_ 2005 ). Still, I can't help but think that this reflects poorly on the updating and patching policy of U.S. Corporations. Unless this is a last-minute attempt to fall into line with the aforementioned act (which, according to the massive changes to the software, it doesn't seem to be), it seems to me that they should have slowly updated their systems, potentially a few airports at a time to iron out any bugs there may be. That assumes that their new software is compatible with the old.

On the bright side, at least they aren't running Vista."
User Journal

Journal Journal: installing Solaris 10's CoolStack with some SMF goodness

Journal by toby

(What is CoolStack?)

Easily installed:

# bunzip2 CSK*
# pkgadd -d CSKamp_x86.pkg
# pkgadd -d CSKperl_x86.pkg

PATH should put CoolStack before bundled Perl:

# cat ~/.bash_profile
export PATH=/usr/sfw/bin:/usr/ccs/bin:/opt/sfw/bin:/usr/local/bin:/opt/SUNWspro/bin:/opt/coolstack/bin:/opt/coolstack/mysql_32bit/bin:$PATH

Windows

Submission + - Windows Home Server nearly ready for prime time

Submitted by
jcatcw
jcatcw writes: "Computerworld's review of Windows Home Server says it's easy to use and effective for backing up data and monitoring the health of a home network, but technically savvy users may find its limitations frustrating. Currently in beta, WHS is a platform for storing, sharing and protecting data from multiple home PCs. It can stream media, provide remote access and monitor PCs on a home network. Any household with more than one PC already needs one. It'll be available to consumers later this year as a hardware appliance that can be managed from a PC running XP or Vista."
Microsoft

Submission + - Is Vista a trap?

Submitted by logube
logube writes: BBC has an article about installing Vista in your existing desktop. Written by Tim Weber, a self-confessed "sucker for technology", this article is a good introduction to the pain and extra money required to get on the latest product of the evil empire. See how you can spend an extra 130 british pounds, and still have no working webcam!
Microsoft

Submission + - Why Microsoft Virtualization licensing is bad?

Submitted by
Nirav Mehta
Nirav Mehta writes: "VMware published a very interesting white paper describing licensing and other techniques being used by Microsoft in the battle for control of the virtualization layer. From the paper — "In particular, Microsoft does not have key virtual infrastructure capabilities (like VMotion), and they are making those either illegal or expensive for customers; Microsoft doesn't have virtual desktop offerings, so they are denying it to customers; and Microsoft is moving to control this new layer that sits on the hardware by forcing their specifications and APIs on the industry." Take a look at the whole paper at http://www.vmware.com/solutions/whitepapers/msoft_ licensing_wp.html"

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