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User Journal

Journal Journal: Jack Thompson is evil 1

Journal by fishdan

Jack Thompson is currently on Fox News blaming video games for the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

Jack said that it would be impossible to carry out a massacre of this proportion without training, and that he was sure when they examined the shooters computer, that "training" program like GTA would be find.
Education

Submission + - 22 Dead In Virginia Tech Shooting

Submitted by nexuspal
nexuspal writes: 22 confirmed dead at Virginia Tech. Shooter killed some at residence hall then two hours later killed others in classrooms. Worst school shooting in US history. CNN Link
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft's War on Linux: It's 58% Faster!

Submitted by Yfrwlf
Yfrwlf writes: Most techies are aware of Microsoft's frontal assault against Linux called Get the Facts, but I decided to pay attention long enough to find out exactly what "facts" they were claiming. From the AMD "case study": "In 2005, AMD increased the speed of a key Oracle-based production-planning application that ran on Sun Solaris by recompiling it to run on both the Windows Server® 2003 R2 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS operating systems. With expert help from the Microsoft Field Services Account Team and Performance Tuning Corporation, AMD identified configuration errors and ways to further optimize the application's performance. In a key benchmark test, the Oracle application ran 58 percent faster on Windows Server 2003 than on Linux." If they needed help to configure Windows to run it, no doubt they were clueless about how to do it in Linux, too. I'd be interested in testing the speed of this program on my own machines to verify this. If only they told us what program it was. It was "key", after all.
Linux Business

Submission + - Linux-based Treos in the works at Palm

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Palm is developing a Linux-based operating system for its handheld devices, according to company Chief Executive Ed Colligan.

Colligan announced Tuesday that the new operating system, which has been in development for a "number of years" and is now due to appear on Palm Treo handsets by the end of this year, will improve the stability of the company's smart phones while enabling greater functionality.

"We have been developing a set of system software that we will roll out before the end of the year that will allow us to take the Palm OS forward, and to modernize it and to upgrade that functionality and to bring the user community and developer community forward on top of a Linux kernel," Colligan said. He added that it was "critical" Palm owned its own technologies.

Colligan added that Palm will continue to release Treos based on Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform, alongside those sporting the new Linux-based OS.

http://news.com.com/Palm+touts+stability+of+Linux- based+Treos/2100-1041_3-6175171.html?tag=nefd.top"
Security

Submission + - All your WEP keys are belong to us

Submitted by Silicon Hustler
Silicon Hustler writes: The Register is reporting a new development in the long-running WEP cracking saga. Erik Tews, Andrei Pychkine and Ralf-Philipp Weinmann of the the technical university Darmstadt in Germany have released the new aircrack-ptw tool, with which: "it is possible to recover a 104 bit WEP key with probability 50% using just 40,000 captured packets. For 60,000 available data packets, the success probability is about 80% and for 85,000 data packets about 95%. Using active techniques like deauth and ARP re-injection, 40,000 packets can be captured in less than one minute under good condition. "
Media

Submission + - Help! My Partner Wants To Leave The Relationship -

Submitted by
lifelover
lifelover writes: ""We had a couple who came to see us, where the wife said she wanted to leave the relationship and the husband still wanted to make the relationship work. We decided to see each member of the couple individually and as a couple. When we had the husband come in to see us for his individual counselling, he stated upfront he was hesitant to trust us because he got the impression that we support couples breaking up. We explained that it wasn't that we supported couples to break up; we were just supportive of people being in their highest and best relationships versus people forcing themselves to stay together even if they are not in their highest and best relationship.""
Privacy

Submission + - Beware of Photo Printing at Walmart Canada

Submitted by dpolak
dpolak writes: I recently discovered that if you use Walmart's Canadian digital photo services you release all rights to your photos. Under their terms of service:

You grant to Wal*Mart Canada Corp. a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, unrestricted, world-wide right and license to access, use, copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, display, perform, communicate to the public, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, and otherwise use such Materials (in whole or in part) in connection with the Site and/or the Products, using any form, media or technology now known or later developed, without providing compensation to you or any other person, without any liability to you or any other person, and free from any obligation of confidence or other duties on the part of Wal*Mart, its affiliates and their respective licensees; Uploaders beware!
Databases

Submission + - How do you keep confusing DB data straight

Submitted by
zappepcs
zappepcs writes: "The Washington Post is running a story about the U.S. Terrorist database and how there are so many errors from its use. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2007/03/24/AR2007032400944.html

" Terror Database Has Quadrupled In Four Years
U.S. Watch Lists Are Drawn From Massive Clearinghouse

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 25, 2007; Page A01

Each day, thousands of pieces of intelligence information from around the world — field reports, captured documents, news from foreign allies and sometimes idle gossip — arrive in a computer-filled office in McLean, where analysts feed them into the nation's central list of terrorists and terrorism suspects.

Called TIDE, for Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, the list is a storehouse for data about individuals that the intelligence community believes might harm the United States. It is the wellspring for watch lists distributed to airlines, law enforcement, border posts and U.S. consulates, created to close one of the key intelligence gaps revealed after Sept. 11, 2001: the failure of federal agencies to share what they knew about al-Qaeda operatives. "

The question is 'How do slashdot users keep such data straight. If its a database and somewhere in it is two records; both for people named John D. Elvinhaus, who both lived in or near Denver at the same time, one who works at 7-11, one works at a security company.

What are the correct ways to keep these records straight, unconfused, not marked as duplicates, or in this case, confusing both as terrorists when only one of them has some unbelievably small link to some terrorist activity? What can the government do to avoid this issue?"
The Internet

Submission + - New vote on .xxx Internet address nears

Submitted by
Billosaur
Billosaur writes: "ICANN is once more set to vote on the creation of the .xxx Internet address. Though the proposal has been voted down by ICANN's board twice before, ICM Registry Inc., the group behind those previous proposals, resubmitted it after they "agreed to hire independent organizations to monitor porn sites' compliance with the new rules, which would be developed by a separate body called the International Foundation for Online Responsibility." Once more the proposal has led to pornographers and religious groups finding themselves on the same side, the porn industry worried that the domain would lead to government controls, the religious groups worried it would make access too easy and allow porn to expand even further onto the Internet."

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