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Comment I guess it's one way to prove a point (Score 1) 1

by itpr15061 (#30133158) Attached to: Flyer Arrested After Declining to Show ID

I agree that all the various measures and checkpoints at airports are more formality than security, but is this really the best way to go about it?

Fighting hairbrained policies with hairbrained publicity stunts isn't going to cause anyone to change their mind, or even make folks reconsider. It just calcifies positions.

Submission + - Cool-Bags Could Cut Server Cooling Costs By 93% (eweekeurope.co.uk) 1

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: UK company Iceotope has launched liquid-cooling technology, which it says surpasses what can be done with water or air-cooling and can cut data centre cooling costs by up to 93 percent. Announced at Supercomputing 2009 in Portland, Oregon, the "modular Liquid-Immersion Cooled Server" technology wraps each server in a cool-bag-like device, which cools components inside a server, rather than cooling the whole data centre, or even a traditional "hot aisle". Earlier this year, IBM predicted that in ten years all data centre servers might be water-cooled.
Security

Submission + - Linux contractor fired for using Firefox on Linux (blogspot.com) 3

Submitted by mariushm
mariushm writes: A US Linux technician received a contract proposal from a big company (with three letters in its name) to patch more than 1000 Linux servers with some proprietary SAN access software. After about a month of grueling process of approval, he came to the very last step...a simple competency test to be taken online. He was given the URL and instructed to complete the test and notify the Project Manager at the computer company with three letters in their name when finished.
However, upon accessing the website, he found out the page would not render at all and upon an inquiry he received the answer from the Project Manager (of the three letter company)that the website will not run on Linux using Firefox and that he will receive a laptop with Windows and VPN software to complete the test.
While waiting for the laptop, he sent an email asking the website administrators for the reason why the page does not load on Firefox/Linux and the company with three letters in the name promptly fired him for "refusing to use Windows and Internet Explorer" and blackballed him from future projects.

Comment Re:Laws (Score 5, Interesting) 698

by itpr15061 (#29987036) Attached to: Comcast's New Throttling Plan Uses Trigger Conditions, Not Silent Blocking

Amen, that was a breath of fresh air in a room full of "me-me's" instinctively chanting that Comcast is eating babies and setting villages on fire, and that anyone who disagrees is a corporate apologist.

To agree further...

If someone actually *needs* 250GB or more of data per month, and full-pipe speeds the entire time to boot, then as you said there is a plan available for that, called commercial or business class service. There *is* a distinction, and it's funny that they don't see the irony when they say "I want what I paid for."

I dropped my landline and cable television both, everything comes through my cable modem (and I stream Netflix heavily as well as Plex) without issue.

I don't think that Comcast implementing throttling is going to be like what Rome did to Carthage. The reality is that if you are downloading a massive multi-gig file it's going to take a while whether you are throttled or not. Any QoS or traffic management 101 class defines this as bulk or best effort traffic and puts it at the bottom - it's not interactive or particularly time sensitive. Why not make it livable for everyone else? And before everyone hits the reply button and complains that Comcast shouldn't have their upstream oversubscribed, please pause first to grab a clue and realize that every ISP oversubscribes. On top of that, cable plants were only really designed for one way downstream delivery of cable channels so upstream bandwidth will always be much more limited. The only way Comcast can make more upstream bandwidth available is by splitting a node, which means they are doubling their upstream bandwidth by doubling their cable plant. As you can imagine, this is very expensive and that cost ultimately gets passed along to the consumer.

I'm sure someone in the comments has couched this as a net neutrality issue. I also don't buy that argument since it's not targeted at a specific person or application.

So yeah, this sucks, but it was more or less inevitable.
Space

Submission + - The tech aboard the International Space Station (cnet.co.uk)

Submitted by CNETNate
CNETNate writes: With its own file server for uploaded Hollywood blockbusters, a 10Mbps Internet connection to Earth and a stock of IBM ThinkPad notebooks for sending emails, the amount of consumer technology aboard the $150 billion International Space Station is impressive. Yet it's the responsibility of just two guys to maintain the uptime of the Space Station's IT, and they have given an in-depth interview with CNET to explain what tech's aboard, how it works and whether Windows viruses are a threat to the astronauts. In a related feature, the Space Station's internal network (which operates over just bandwidth of just1Mbps) and its connected array of Lenovo notebooks is explained, along with the future tech we could see aboard the traveling colony as it traverses the future.
Government

Submission + - Flu Pandemic may lead to websites being blocked (reuters.com)

Submitted by mikael
mikael writes: While corporations and businesses have been advised on how to allow employees to work remotely from home, there is still some uncertainty on how ISP's would be able to handle the extra flow of traffic. The Department of Homeland Security is suggesting that ISP's be prepared to block popular websites in order to prioritize bandwidth for commercial use.

Submission + - French Branch of Scientology Is Convicted of Fraud (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by lugannerd
lugannerd writes: The French branch of the Church of Scientology was convicted of fraud and fined nearly $900,000 on Tuesday by a Paris court. But the judges did not ban the church entirely, as the prosecution had demanded, saying that a change in the law prevented such an action for fraud. The church said it would appeal.

The verdict was among the most important in several years to involve the controversial group, which is registered as a religion in the United States but has no similar legal protection in France. It is considered a sect here, and says it has some 45,000 adherents, out of some 12 million worldwide. It was the first time here that the church itself had been tried and convicted, as opposed to individual members.

Submission + - AT&T 3G Microcell use limitations

Submitted by paddlingbear
paddlingbear writes: AT&T's 3G Microcell advertising in BIG LETTERS offers "up to 5 bars in your home". In type almost as large it says the microcell must be used in an area where AT&T is licensed to provide service. Only in small print in the TOS does it mention that the use of a microcell is restricted to four metropolitan areas, Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, and Columbia SC. When I bought my microcell at an AT&T store in Atlanta, I asked the clerk if it would be useable in the mountains of Western North Carolina where I had a second home but where AT&T service is zero because I'm in a valley with two mountains between me and the nearest AT&T tower. He said yes. Tech support says no...too bad. The TOS reserve the right for AT&T to restrict national network deployment, so who knows when if ever AT&T will be able to compete with Verizon in the Carolinas, even in a situation where I'm trying to dump AT&T's data load onto my Verizon DSL line.

Submission + - Church of Scientology Convicted of Fraud (timesonline.co.uk) 1

Submitted by IceDiver
IceDiver writes: As most Slashdotters know, the Church of Scientology's practices are widely scorned and even mocked. Now, however, the so-called Church has been convicted in France of fraud and one of its leaders given a 2 year sentence. Yes, the sentence is only a suspended one, and the effect this will have on the worldwide church is still to be determined, but we can hope. Is this the beginning of the end for L.Ron Hubbard's five-decade-old scam?
Software

Submission + - Lost Northwest Pilots Were Trying Out New Software

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The NY Times reports that two Northwest Airlines pilots who flew about 110 miles past their destination to the skies over Wisconsin as more than a dozen air-traffic controllers in three locations tried to get the plane's attention had taken out their personal laptops in the cockpit, a violation of airline policy, so the first officer could tutor the captain in a new scheduling system put in place by Delta Air Lines, which acquired Northwest last fall. "Both said they lost track of time," said an interim report from the National Transportation Safety Board countering theories in aviation circles that the two pilots might have fallen asleep or were arguing in the cockpit. "Using laptops or engaging in activity unrelated to the pilots' command of the aircraft during flight," said a statement from Delta Airlines, "is strictly against the airline's flight deck policies and violations of that policy will result in termination." Industry executives and analysts said the pilots' behavior was a striking lapse for such veteran airmen who have a total of 31,000 flying hours of experience between them. In the case of Flight 188, "Neither pilot was aware of the airplane's position until a flight attendant called about five minutes before they were scheduled to land and asked what was their estimated time of arrival," the interim report said. Flight attendants have not had keys to open a plane's heavy cockpit door since the 2001 terrorist attacks, and there is no procedure in which they regularly check on pilots. The cabin crew communicates by phone or through a series of chimes that can be heard in the passenger cabin."

Submission + - Digital River makes hash of Windows 7 upgrade (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by kel5ash
kel5ash writes: Microsoft has been flooded with complaints from hundreds of disgruntled university bods who have struggled to download or successfully install Windows 7 files supplied by Digital River.

Users weren't only hit with problems trying to download the software. Some managed to grab the necessary files via Digital River's site, only then to be faced either with incompatibility issues or, worse still, having errors spat out when they attempted to unpack files from the download.

"Rather then providing an ISO file for students to download, they [Digital River] provided an unpacker and a couple of .BOX files which must be unpacked into a disk image," a Windows 7 customer told us. "It seems that users with x86 systems cannot unpack the files for an x64 download, the unpacker halts with an error."

And The Register has heard from unhappy academics in Australia too.

"Basically, when running the setup file to 'unpack' the two .BOX files (note that they have chosen to use a non-standard format, rather than providing an ISO that everyone can work with), the installer fails and throws an 'unspecified error' message," one Oz reader similarly reported. "This is unacceptable, and personally I'm hoping for a solution, or my money back."

Microsoft said that it and Digital River were "investigating" that particular problem. In the meantime it's telling users that the likely cause relates to incomplete files becoming corrupted on their computers.

"Users encountering this issue should try and re-download the files by logging into your [Digital River] order," said Microsoft.

It's fair to say that Digital River has made a complete hash of adequately explaining what users can and can't do with the upgrades on offer. Add to that the fact that the supplier failed to provide a simple .ISO file to customers downloading the software and it's of little wonder that so many customers who paid up for the Windows 7 academic offer in good faith are struggling to get their hands on the OS.
Yahoo!

Submission + - Geocities shutting down today (yahoo.com) 1

Submitted by Paolo DF
Paolo DF writes: There is not much to say: Geocities is closing today. It has been a sign of the rising "Internet for everyone" era. You may love it, or hate it, but millions of people had their first contact with a web presence right here.
I know it's something that most slasfotters will see as a n00b thing, and that the Internet was fine *before* Geocities, but I still think that nevertheless some credit is due. Heck, there's even a modified xkcd homepage for that!

Submission + - Swiss Experimenter Breeds Swarm Intelligence (hplusmagazine.com)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: Researchers simulated evolution with multiple generations of food-seeking robots in a new study of artificial swarm intelligence. "Under some conditions, sophisticated communication evolved," says one researcher. And in a more recent study, the swarms of bots didn't just evolve cooperative strategies — they also evolved the ability to deceive. ("Forget zombies," joked one commenter. "This is the real threat.") "The study of artificial swarm intelligence provides insight into the nature of intelligence in general, and offers an interesting perspective on the nature of Darwinian selection, competition, and cooperation." And there's also some cool video of the bots in action.

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