Comment Who's the villan? (Score 4, Funny) 133
If the IMF goes in and screws everything up then I guess The Secretary will disavow any knowledge of their actions.
Comment Entertainment is entertaining (Score 2) 300
Nearly 20 years in IT with a diversified entertainment company. Think movies, TV and theme parks.
After one regime change my new boss ends up being a highly trained and well-liked mechanical engineer with no IT experience. He also ended up running the copy shop so our staff meetings had my staff - some with advanced degrees and copy shop staff. Our concerns were based on development schedules, roll out, training, service, etc and the copy shop wanted a Keurig for themselves. Guess what we talked about most of the time in the first month of weekly meetings? Yeah, why there was no budget for their Keurig. They brought in advertisements from Target and other places with the best prices. They argued. We sat there slack jawed.
As the manager new boss engineer came to me for help solving this "concern". Reach into your pocket and pull out $100 of your $150,000/year salary and buy if for them. He was dumbfounded that I would even suggest such a thing.. I bought one at a garage sale the next weekend and wrapped it in a ribbon and put it in the copy room saying "From (new bosses name)" Problem solved. Yeah they complained about having to buy their own coffee after that , but by that time no one cared.
Same boss was chatting with me in my office when he suddenly noticed that my desk was bigger than his. He assured me it wasn't that he wanted MY desk, just that he didn't know they made a larger size in the style he wanted. Much work time is lost searching for a free desk of similar propotions. His secretary cried from the frustration of having to beg for furniture because this guy wouldn't pay for anything.
One weekend me and my server lead swapped the desks. Told the boss we found one somewhere. He never noticed mine was suddenly smaller.
Finally manipulated him into taking charge of intranet requirements for upper management. After a year of no progress and reporting same to his boss, he was reassigned.
Comment Re:Missing an option (Score 1) 172
Except the National Do Not Call Registry is only about interstate commerce. If they are calling from within your home state then state and local laws apply. Check it out.
Did the Spamhaus DDoS Really Slow Down Global Internet Access? 70
CowboyRobot writes "Despite the headlines, the big denial of service attack may not have slowed the Internet after all. The argument against the original claim include the fact that reports of Internet users seeing slowdowns came not from service providers, but the DDoS mitigation service CloudFlare, which signed up Spamhaus as a customer last week. Also, multiple service providers and Internet watchers have now publicly stated that while the DDoS attacks against Spamhaus could theoretically have led to slowdowns, they've seen no evidence that this occurred for general Internet users. And while some users may have noticed a slowdown, the undersea cable cuts discovered by Egyptian sailors had more of an impact than the DDoS."
Google Releases Street View Images From Fukushima Ghost Town 63
mdsolar writes in with news that Goolge has released Street View pictures from inside the zone that was evacuated after the Fukushima disaster. "Google Inc. (GOOG) today released images taken by its Street View service from the town of Namie, Japan, inside the zone that was evacuated after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011. Google, operator of the world's biggest Web search engine, entered Namie this month at the invitation of the town's mayor, Tamotsu Baba, and produced the 360-degree imagery for the Google Maps and Google Earth services, it said in an e-mailed statement. All of Namie's 21,000 residents were forced to flee after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, about 8 kilometers (5 miles) from the town, causing the world's worst nuclear accident after Chernobyl. Baba asked Mountain View, California-based Google to map the town to create a permanent record of its state two years after the evacuation, he said in a Google blog post."
United States Begins Flying Stealth Bombers Over South Korea 567
skade88 writes "The New York Times is reporting that the United States has started flying B-2 stealth bomber runs over South Korea as a show of force to North Korea. The bombers flew 6,500 miles to bomb a South Korean island with mock explosives. Earlier this month the U.S. Military ran mock B-52 bombing runs over the same South Korean island. The U.S. military says it shows that it can execute precision bombing runs at will with little notice needed. The U.S. also reaffirmed their commitment to protecting its allies in the region. The North Koreans have been making threats to turn South Korea into a sea of fire. North Korea has also made threats claiming they will nuke the United States' mainland."
DOJ Often Used Cell Tower Impersonating Devices Without Explicit Warrants 146
Via the EFF comes news that, during a case involving the use of a Stingray device, the DOJ revealed that it was standard practice to use the devices without explicitly requesting permission in warrants. "When Rigmaiden filed a motion to suppress the Stingray evidence as a warrantless search in violation of the Fourth Amendment, the government responded that this order was a search warrant that authorized the government to use the Stingray. Together with the ACLU of Northern California and the ACLU, we filed an amicus brief in support of Rigmaiden, noting that this 'order' wasn't a search warrant because it was directed towards Verizon, made no mention of an IMSI catcher or Stingray and didn't authorize the government — rather than Verizon — to do anything. Plus to the extent it captured loads of information from other people not suspected of criminal activity it was a 'general warrant,' the precise evil the Fourth Amendment was designed to prevent. ... The emails make clear that U.S. Attorneys in the Northern California were using Stingrays but not informing magistrates of what exactly they were doing. And once the judges got wind of what was actually going on, they were none too pleased:"
Comment Re:Space Pen (Score 1) 712
I agree. At least try the Space Pen and see if it meets your needs before you run out and buy a dozen different things to frustrate you even more.
Happy Towel Day 122
An anonymous reader writes "While Douglas Adams continues his attempt to set a new record for the longest extended lunch break, geeks all over the universe pay tribute to the beloved author by celebrating the tenth edition of Towel Day. Towel Day is more alive than ever. This year Richard Dawkins, one of Adams' best friends, has tweeted a Towel Day reminder to his numerous followers. The CERN Bulletin has published an article on Towel Day. There has been TV coverage and there will be a radio interview. The Military Republic of the Deltan Imperium, a newly formed micronation, has recognized Towel Day as an official holiday. In Hungary several hundreds of hitchhiker fans want to have a picnic together in a park. And there's a concert, a free downloadable nerdrap album, a free game being released, the list goes on and on."
Dying Man Shares Unseen Challenger Video 266
longacre writes "An amateur video of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion has been made public for the first time. The Florida man who filmed it from his front yard on his new Betamax camcorder turned the tape over to an educational organization a week before he died this past December. The Space Exploration Archive has since published the video into the public domain in time for the 24th anniversary of the catastrophe. Despite being shot from about 70 miles from Cape Canaveral, the shuttle and the explosion can be seen quite clearly. It is unclear why he never shared the footage with NASA or the media. NASA officials say they were not aware of the video, but are interested in examining it now that it has been made available."
Comment Dead trees (Score 1) 401
paper and PDF files cannot be "messed" with and passed on with new, incorrect, information added in (without some extra work beyond the problems in that area a wiki presents)
Remember - you are showing people how to use a product and NOT teaching them a new skill or how to do their jobs (hopefully).
It is not unexpected that your company would require some basic knowledge beyond remembering to breath in order to provide security services.
Submission + - Gentoo on the PS3 - Full install instructions
An anonymous reader writes: My friend Jake just bought a PS3, and he wanted to install Linux on it. Since he didn't know much about Linux, it was my responsibility to help him with it. His requirements — Install a distribution which is easy to maintain and run. He wanted to make the full use of his Linux install, so he needed a distro which wouldn't hold him back with frustrating problems. The only solution was using a distro which had a better package management system, and did its work without bothering you, the end user. Having used Gentoo extensively, I knew that this would be the solution to my problems. What follows is full install instructions, plus personal opinions, on why Gentoo is better than Fedora Core or YDL on the PS3
Submission + - Kernel 2.6.20
mcalwell writes: "For only being a release candidate the Linux 2.6.20 kernel has already generated quite a bit of attention. On top of adding asynchronous SCSI scanning, multi-threaded USB probing, and many driver updates, the Linux 2.6.20 kernel will include a full virtualization (not para-virtualization) solution. Kernel-based Virtual Machine (or KVM for short) is a GPL software project that has been developed and sponsored by Qumranet. In this article we are offering a brief overview of the Kernel-based Virtual Machine for Linux as well as offering up in-house performance numbers as we compare KVM to other virtualization solutions such as QEMU Accelerator and Xen.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item =623&num=1"
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&ite
Submission + - MS Patch Day Misses Word Zero-Days
bungee jumper writes: "Microsoft released four bulletins with patches for 10 vulnerabilities but there are no fixes for known (and under-attack) MS Word zero-day flaws, eweek.com reports. The January batch covers critical bugs in Excel, Outlook and Windows. The first confirmed Windows Vista flaw, a denial-of-service issue that was publicly released on an underground hacker site in Russia, also remains unpatched."
Slashdot Top Deals
"Most of us, when all is said and done, like what we like and make up reasons for it afterwards." -- Soren F. Petersen
