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Comment Re:Interesting... (Score 1) 225

by Auntie Virus (#29968752) Attached to: Dell Rugged Laptops Not Quite Tough Enough

Things like dropping a laptop from 20 feet up onto concrete because you had more residual lubricant on your gloved hand than you realized happen on occasion

Yeah thanks for that. Fscking TSA... how you accidentally dropped it *up* 20 feet is beyond me though. And geez, ferchrissake change gloves after the cavity search before inspecting my notebook.

Comment Re:They've taken a leaf out of the UK's book (Score 1) 584

by Auntie Virus (#29898981) Attached to: No Hand-Held Devices In Ontario Cars

But then I remembered how many SUVs there are on the road, and how badly they handle and brake.

WTF? A company I used to work for made us go on a high speed collision avoidance driving course (lot's of fun as it turns out) we had the option of using our own vehicles, so I brought my Jeep Grand Cherokee. Co-workers were shocked. "You'll roll it!!" I said "you watch too much TV" and took it through all the manouvers. Most were shocked at how well it handled, and braked. Yes my current German AWD sedan handles/brakes better, but not much better, the Jeep was great in it's day.

Comment Re:Uh-huh. (Score 1) 298

by Auntie Virus (#29076331) Attached to: Dell Considering ARM-Based Smartbooks

"Then again they actually spent the R&D money to come up with something better. Everyone keeps talking about needing innovations in batteries for Hybrids, Electrics, Laptops, Cell Phones and Apple actually did it."

Really? Apple actually came up with a new or improved battery technology? DO tell. Usually they just buy from Sony et al. And they REALLY get 7 hours? Colour me skeptical.
Operating Systems

CentOS Administrator Reappears 211

Posted by Soulskill from the bet-he-was-hiking-in-the-appalachian-trail dept.
str8edge sends word that Lance Davis, the CentOS project administrator who had mysteriously gone absent, has now returned and is working with the development team to get things back on track. From their announcement: "The CentOS Development team had a routine meeting today with Lance Davis in attendance. During the meeting a majority of issues were resolved immediately and a working agreement was reached with deadlines for remaining unresolved issues. There should be no impact to any CentOS users going forward. The CentOS project is now in control of the CentOS.org and CentOS.info domains and owns all trademarks, materials, and artwork in the CentOS distributions. We look forward to working with Lance to quickly complete all the agreed upon issues. More information will follow soon."

Comment Re:not good. (Score 1) 147

by Auntie Virus (#25309513) Attached to: Nagios 3 Enterprise Network Monitoring

My personal experience is that Nagios is probably the LEAST easy to use of any piece of software, period.

You've obviously never installed/configured RT3. I used to use Big Brother, tried Zenoss after reading about it, then tried Nagios. Nagios totally rocks.
It's not THAT hard to configure. We use Nagios, Snort, Ntop and RT3. Hard to say how much money I saved by not using any of the big commercial products, but it's a lot. But RT3, crap, THAT is hard to get going..
Data Storage

Building Brainlike Computers 251

Posted by kdawson from the cortexes-for-all dept.
newtronic clues us to an article in IEEE Spectrum by Jeff Hawkins (founder of Palm Computing), titled Why can't a computer be more like a brain? Hawkins brings us up to date with his latest endeavor, Numenta. He covers progress since his book On Intelligence and gives details on Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM), which is a platform for simulating neocortical activity. Programming HTMs is different — you essentially feed them sensory data. Numenta has created a framework and tools, free in a "research release," that allow anyone to build and program HTMs.
Encryption

Submission + - Unintended Consequences of Rogers' Packet Shaping

Submitted by
knorthern knight
knorthern knight writes: "To counter P2P programs that encrypt their traffic to evade detection, Rogers Cable in Canada has apparently started throttling ALL ENCRYPTED IP TRAFFIC, according to this article on Michael Geist's blog. How many of you log in to work over a VPN or ssh-tunnel? How many get usenet news, or email over an encrypted connection. This could be a problem for Rogers Cable customers. Michael Geist, who happens to be the "Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law" at U of Ottawa, has "been advised that the University computer help desk has received a steady stream of complaints from Rogers customers about off-campus email service.""
Power

Submission + - Does Global Warming Cause C02?

Submitted by
StealthyRoid
StealthyRoid writes: "A documentary set to air on BBC-4 on Thursday, March 8, makes the claim that the global warming alarmist camp has got the relationship between increasing C02 levels and global warming exactly backwards: That an increase in the Earth's temperature is the cause of elevated C02, and the slight uptick in global average temperature that we've been seeing is the result of cosmological effects, not human interference. The documentary also claims that the attempted "fixes" for global warming demanded by the alarmist movement (massive energy output reductions, de-industrialization, etc...) are going to end up hurting poor nations to the point where they're condemned to life in the stone age."
Microsoft

Submission + - Vista activation circumvented with BIOS emulation

Submitted by
Steve Kerrison
Steve Kerrison writes: "If a brute force Vista product key-gen won't work, then a tool to exploit the volume licensing used by OEMs might. HEXUS.net reports that a toolkit has been produced that emulates an OEM BIOS to make the system appear as a pre-activated machine. Combined with the correct certificate and OEM key, Vista won't perform any further activation."
Science

Scientist Develops Caffeinated Baked Goods 195

Posted by Zonk from the we-truly-live-in-an-age-of-wonders dept.
Zephyros writes "The AP is reporting on a scientist who has found a way to get caffeine into donuts, bagels, and other baked goods without the bitter flavor. Each piece has as much caffeine as two cups of coffee. No word on when or where they will be available, but for those of us that just don't get the same kick from the morning cuppa that we used to, this may be another tasty delivery vector to look forward to for that jump-start."
Hardware Hacking

Print Messages On Your Beer 159

Posted by kdawson from the for-its-own-sweet-sake dept.
Migraineman writes "I stumbled upon a clever hack by Sprite. He reverse-engineered the pin functions on an HP inkjet cartridge and built a simple driver board that converts the cartridge into a hand-held inkjet printer. The driver board is programmed with a fixed message. Moving the 'print head' is your responsibility. Printing messages on a whiteboard was the original inspiration, but printing messages on the foam head of a Guinness is just inspired."

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