Comment Re:Backup procedures (Score 1) 214
One should backup anyways. But typically you have 48 hours to know if a certain track will hit your area. Not 5 days. Weather forecasts are only good to 90% up to 3 days.
Comment Re:Cloud is supposed to have REDUNDANCY! (Score 1) 214
Cloud storage is less of an issue than the cloud hosted services. High availability, even in the cloud, has to be architected into the software.
Wrong... because if your storage is on one continent and you fail over to another continent/region, suddenly your app slows to a crawl as your storage has to go over a WAN link (even if it's within Amazon's network). This leads to timeouts in queries/connections and generally bad things that will happen.
Comment Re:Cloud is supposed to have REDUNDANCY! (Score 1) 214
Bad service architecture... Not multi-homing to multiple servers in multiple service regions.
Comment Re:Cloud is supposed to have REDUNDANCY! (Score 1) 214
Not to mention that the app has to be architected to take advantage of different zones/regions.
Comment Re:Cloud is supposed to have REDUNDANCY! (Score 1) 214
Problem is that most companies that use these services don't load balance across the datacenters. They usually have most of their core in one given region and nothing or load balanced in others... Mostly it's because of cost having extra instances up and running... but it's also in software design and app architecture.
If you don't have multiple cores in multiple regions, your site will go down when there's an outage in that cloud region.
So cost wise, if you have to do this... where's your savings again? The Cloud is bullshit.
Submission + - SCO Group files Chapter 7 (groklaw.net) 3
rkhalloran writes: The remnants of the failed litigation engine that was SCOX has finally filed for liquidation under Chapter 7 of the bankruptcy code. "There is no hope for rehabilitation". At this point the lawyers will suck the marrow from the carcass and leave the bones to bleach out in the sun.
Submission + - Korea based SK Telecom to Launch First Ever Voice over LTE HD Calls Service (paritynews.com)
hypnosec writes: South Korea has left US and other developed nations behind in the race for HD calls aka Voice over LTE as SK Telecom has announced that it will be providing high-quality voice calls over LTE service from August 8. While the rest of the world is still deliberating on when to start offering 4G services and when to hold 4G spectrum auctions like the UK, SK Telecom has upped the ante by becoming the first telecoms company to offer voice call services in HD through the use of “audio codecs capable of handling 2.2 times wider frequency bandwidth than that of 3G voice calls.” The audio codec to be used is Adapted Multi-Rate Wide Band (AMR-WB) codec notes Korea IT Times. Such is the quality of voice calls that users will actually feel that the caller will think that the person he/she is talking to is just right there, next to him/her. Another startling revelation is that the call connect time for a HD call will be anywhere between 0.25 to 2.5 seconds compared to 5 seconds in a 3G call making it around 2 to 20 times faster than the latter.
Submission + - How $60 could save your iPhone's life [video] (bgr.com)
redkemper writes: There is no expression quite like the look of terror that hits someone’s face when his or her smartphone accidentally takes a bath. Be it poolside, table-side, bar-side or toilet-side, people’s grip on their phones tends to mysteriously loosen whenever water is around. But there’s hope: A ”nano-coating” service from a company called Liquipel could mean the difference between your heart skipping a beat followed by a good laugh, and having to spend hundreds of dollars on a replacement phone out of contract...
Comment Re:Times have changed (Score 1) 266
Why do I have to pay for your well? Drill your own damn well is what Don Corleone should have said.
Submission + - The original iPhone: The blueprint for all modern day smartphones (networkworld.com)
colinneagle writes: Five years ago, Apple released the original iPhone and it's not an overstatement to say that the device fundamentally changed the way the world interacts with technology.
Now, the original iPhone admittedly didn't come with every feature right out of the box — GPS and copy and paste come to mind — but there's no question that the iPhone revolutionized the smartphone industry and injected a much needed breath of fresh air into a market that was largely stagnant.
As is typically the case, the original iPhone launch brought along with it a number of tech pundits who were quick to lambast Apple's foray into the smartphone market. For a variety of reasons, pundits were adamant that the iPhone, at worst, was bound to fail or become a niche product at best. But almost comically, many of the features that the original iPhone was overwhelmingly criticized for have now, to a large degree, become standardized on many of today's more popular smartphones. Further, one can make an overwhelmingly strong case arguing that the design principles that went into the iPhone, going all the way back to the original, have helped form the blueprint for what has since become the modern day smartphone.
Now, the original iPhone admittedly didn't come with every feature right out of the box — GPS and copy and paste come to mind — but there's no question that the iPhone revolutionized the smartphone industry and injected a much needed breath of fresh air into a market that was largely stagnant.
As is typically the case, the original iPhone launch brought along with it a number of tech pundits who were quick to lambast Apple's foray into the smartphone market. For a variety of reasons, pundits were adamant that the iPhone, at worst, was bound to fail or become a niche product at best. But almost comically, many of the features that the original iPhone was overwhelmingly criticized for have now, to a large degree, become standardized on many of today's more popular smartphones. Further, one can make an overwhelmingly strong case arguing that the design principles that went into the iPhone, going all the way back to the original, have helped form the blueprint for what has since become the modern day smartphone.
Submission + - Reddit Was Built By A Horde of Fake Accounts (vice.com)
derekmead writes: How, exactly, did Reddit get so big? Well, according to Reddit cofounder Steve Huffman, in the early days the Reddit crew just faked it ‘til they made it. In a video for Udacity, an online source for education and lectures, Huffman describes how the first Redditors populated the site’s content with tons of fake accounts.
These days, with the site’s users wary of people using expendable accounts to try to seed their own content, it seems nuts that an army of fakers would be seeding content all over the site. But early on, Huffman said that using fake accounts driven by the founders was key to building the tone they wanted to the site. Basically, by populating the site with accounts whose strings they pulled, the Reddit crew could shape the discourse and sharing of the site in the direction they wanted, and as the real user base grew, those standards held, allowing the fake accounts to fade away.
These days, with the site’s users wary of people using expendable accounts to try to seed their own content, it seems nuts that an army of fakers would be seeding content all over the site. But early on, Huffman said that using fake accounts driven by the founders was key to building the tone they wanted to the site. Basically, by populating the site with accounts whose strings they pulled, the Reddit crew could shape the discourse and sharing of the site in the direction they wanted, and as the real user base grew, those standards held, allowing the fake accounts to fade away.
Comment You know what it takes? (Score 1) 1
Funding...
No bucks. No Buck Rogers.
Submission + - Women Have Edge On 'Brogrammers' at DEFCON Social Engineering CTF (threatpost.com)
chicksdaddy writes: "Men may dominate the ranks of vulnerability researchers and hackers, but could women be the superior social engineers? That's a question that the organizers of the annual Social Engineering Capture the Flag (CTF) contest at DEFCON will try to answer.
In a break from recent years, the third annual DEFCON Social Engineering CTF will pit ten men against ten women in a battle of the sexes to see who can better weasel, cajole and worm their way into obtaining sensitive information from some of the U.S.'s leading corporations. And, according to one of the contest's organizers, the smart money is on the women.
"Unfortunately, there's a chauvinist consensus that females don't get security," said Chris Hadnagy of Social-Engineer.org, which sponsors the annual Capture the Flag contest. "The truth is that, as social engineers, women do better. We've seen hacktivists like Anonymous and LulzSec used females as part of their attacks.""
In a break from recent years, the third annual DEFCON Social Engineering CTF will pit ten men against ten women in a battle of the sexes to see who can better weasel, cajole and worm their way into obtaining sensitive information from some of the U.S.'s leading corporations. And, according to one of the contest's organizers, the smart money is on the women.
"Unfortunately, there's a chauvinist consensus that females don't get security," said Chris Hadnagy of Social-Engineer.org, which sponsors the annual Capture the Flag contest. "The truth is that, as social engineers, women do better. We've seen hacktivists like Anonymous and LulzSec used females as part of their attacks.""
Submission + - DEA wants to scan all license plates on Utah's 'drug corridor' (sltrib.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Everyone driving on Interstate 15 in southwest Utah may soon have their license plate scanned by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
The DEA and two sheriffs are asking permission to install stationary license plate scanners on the freeway in Beaver and Washington counties. The primary purpose would be to catch or build cases against drug traffickers, but at a Utah Legislature committee meeting Wednesday, the sheriffs and a DEA representative described how the scanners also could be used to catch kidnappers and violent criminals.
That, however, wasn’t the concern of skeptical legislators on the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Interim Committee. They were worried about the DEA storing the data for two years and who would be able to access it.
The DEA and two sheriffs are asking permission to install stationary license plate scanners on the freeway in Beaver and Washington counties. The primary purpose would be to catch or build cases against drug traffickers, but at a Utah Legislature committee meeting Wednesday, the sheriffs and a DEA representative described how the scanners also could be used to catch kidnappers and violent criminals.
That, however, wasn’t the concern of skeptical legislators on the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Interim Committee. They were worried about the DEA storing the data for two years and who would be able to access it.
Comment Howard who??? (Score 1) 1
So what has he done for National Computer Security other than be the footnote in Anonymous/Lulzsec activities as the guy who was asleep at the switch?
