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Submission + - GIMP Abandons SourceForge. Distributes via FTP Instead (gimp.org)

Dangerous_Minds writes: GIMP, a free and open source altenernative to image manipulation software like Photoshop, recently announced that it will no longer be distributing their program through SourceForge. Citing some of the ads as reasons, they say that the tipping point was "the introduction of their own SourceForge Installer software, which bundles third-party offers with Free Software packages. We do not want to support this kind of behavior, and have thus decided to abandon SourceForge." The policy changes were reported back in August by Gluster. GIMP is now distributing their software via their own FTP page instead. Is Sourceforge becoming the next CNET?

Submission + - Most Drivers Would Hand Keys Over to Computer if it Meant Lower Insurance Rates (computerworld.com) 1

Lucas123 writes: Most drivers would consider buying an autonomous vehicle if it meant their insurance rates would be reduced by 80%, a new survey of 2,000 licensed drivers found. Oddly enough, the survey by the online consumer insurance site Carinsurance.com also showed that 75% of respondents think they could drive a car better than a computer. Another 64% said computers were not capable of the same quality of decision-making as human drivers. And 75% would not trust a driverless car to take their children to school. The survey also asked what commuters would be doing if a computer handled the driving: More than one-in-four would text/talk with friends; 21% would read; 10% would sleep; 8% would watch movies; 7% would play games; and 7% would work. The rest of those survyed said they'd just watch the scenery blow by.

Comment Re:More Courts (Score 1) 599

The requests were made multiple times. Yes, his manager wasn't heavy handed regarding obtaining passwords due to the desire to keep the talent. But the fact is that he designed in backdoors into a critical system and rigged it to where he was the only one who could access the network management. The rest is theatrics which lead to his demise.

Comment Re:Passwords are property of the employer (Score 5, Informative) 599

Wrong - it wasn't that simple.

http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/A129583.PDF

In December 2007, the city‟s Human Services Agency (HSA) experienced a
power outage. When power was restored, its computers could not connect to
FiberWAN—the configurations of its CE device had been erased because they had been
saved to VRAM. Childs reloaded the configurations and got the system reconnected.
When the HSA information security officer learned that the CE configurations had been
stored in VRAM, he protested to Childs that this was unacceptable. Citing security
concerns, Childs explained that he wanted to prevent a physical connection to the CE that
would allow someone to obtain the configurations using the password recovery feature.
He suggested disabling the password recovery feature instead; the information security
officer agreed. Tong also agreed to this solution, as it would address a concern about
hacking into the HSA‟s CE device. Soon, Childs disabled the password recovery feature
on all CE devices citywide, and there were no backup configurations on any of the city‟s
CE devices. As the password recovery feature could not be disabled on core PE devices,
Childs erased their configurations that had been stored on NVRAM.

Comment Re:Passwords are property of the employer (Score 1) 599

No, that's not true either. The junior admins likely only had access to the switch infrastructure or maybe pieces that were not part of the core network. But from what I recall, he was the only one who had access to the core network infrastructure and ran it in a memory-resident condition without a configuration saved to the NVRAM for "security purposes".

Comment Re:Passwords are property of the employer (Score 2) 599

Actually, he went one step further. The way you do a password reset to infrastructure hardware is to bring the hardware down to a single user mode by powercycling and connecting into the console port. But he configured the network in such a way that there was no non-volatile configuration saved and that the act of power cycling would wipe out the configuration of the network thereby making that piece of the network failed until it could be reconfigured which on a network as large as San Francisco would be quite a challenge.

He went to far to believe that he was irreplaceable and the fact that his own supervisors let themselves be put in that situation are almost as culpable.

Comment Re:no such beast. (Score 1) 6

+1 as you cannot change the laws of physics.

You might want to look into providers like Inmarsat who will be releasing a new product soon that will be >1mbit bi-directional. Also there are Ku band providers like Hughes and others who provide megabits of speed. As for weather, keep in mind as the higher in frequency you go, the more that weather and obstructions play a factor in connection speed.

Comment Re:Is this really something we want to celebrate? (Score 1) 666

I've driven both... alot. And I would consider the Autobahn *marginally* better in terms of condition. And he was driving a vehicle that passed those same vehicle inspections (save for the extra fuel tanks). The reality is that most drivers in America don't drive well. Typically they're way too distracted.

In Europe, there's nothing all that special about the roads except that people have learned to drive in the right lane. When you take away the speed limit, people just go the speed they feel is comfortable. And if everyone is in the right lane, there isn't the issue of having to do erratic maneuvers to avoid other drivers. Certainly there are speed limited areas and some places have speed cameras. But in Germany, to me it was no different than driving in the midwest until you got to the cities... then it was like any other city.

Italy on the otherhand was both awesome to speed... er.. drive and freaky to drive in the cities (pedestrians walk into the streets even on major throughfares without second thought).

Comment Those that know.... (Score 2) 140

First, why not engage the community like Seattle Wireless to see if they're willing to setup a mesh in the park. They're a non-profit, your a non-profit...

I don't think your end goal was to provide coverage for everyone. If you have a bunch of people watching netflix while at the park, then why have live entertainment? Having a bunch of people all wired in would harsh my buzz instead of it being a social event.

Understandably for concessions, you'll need wifi or connectivity of somekind to keep capitalism alive. For that you can set up a small wifi-mesh across the concessions which are at the south end of the park and link it to one of the buildings up the hill via point-to-point mesh. That way you're not having to cover the entire length of the park (where there is still minimal coverage for 911/sms/etc. services) and still have something a little quicker than dialup for the vendors who paid money to setup stands for the event.

I doubt you want the event donation fees being swallowed up by trying to setup something elaborate when business functional will do.

Comment At the end of the day, you still aren't hip... (Score 1) 2

The reason that STEM in K-12 fails is the same when we grew up. It's not cool to sit and code when forwarding meme and lolcats provides instant gratification with them and their peers. Sure there are one-off kids that write pieces of code that timeshift twitter feeds or actual interesting solutions to problem. But most kids are consumers only without the discipline to create. We don't teach invention. We teach regurgitation for standardized tests. And Hollywood's depiction of technology doesn't help when they show crime labs able to analyze DNA in moments and access every single bootprint instantly out of their Easy Bake computer systems.

Necessity is the mother of invention. But beyond bitches and money, they have no other needs in a world that has everything else delivered to them via UPS.

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