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Comment A different point of view (Score 1) 383

by James Ojaste (#41462989) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Explaining Version Control To Non-Technical People?

Your manager doesn't care how you will use it or what the internals are doing in the background. They care a) how much it will cost/save (both in terms of your time and in terms of cash), b) what will it enable you to do (extra services they can sell?) and c) what risks will it mitigate or exacerbate. Give them a couple of buzzwords that they can google if they want to sound knowledgeable (such as Change Management and Release Management).
Security

Submission + - California Testers Find Flaws in Voting Machines (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by quanticle
quanticle writes: According to Ars Technica, California testers have discovered severe flaws in the ES&S voting machines. The paper seals were easily bypassed, and the lock could be picked with a "common office implement". After cracking the physical security the device, the testers found it simple to reconfigure the BIOS to boot off external media. After booting a version of Linux, they found that critical system files were stored in plain text. They also found that the election management system that initializes the voting machines used unencrypted protocols to transmit the initialization data to the voting machines, allowing for a man-in-the-middle attack.

Altogether, it is a troubling report for a company already in hot water for selling uncertified equipment to counties.
Space

Submission + - New Theory Explains Periodic Mass Extinctions

Submitted by i_like_spam
i_like_spam writes: The theory that the dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid impact, the K-T extinction, is well known and supported by fossil and geological evidence. Asteroid impact theory does not apply to the other fluctuations in biodiversity, however, which follow an approximate 62 million-year cycle. As reported in Science news, a new theory seems to explain periodic mass extinctions. The new theory found that oscillations in the Sun relative to the plane of the Milky Way correlate with changes in biodiversity on Earth. The researchers suggest that an increase in the exposure of Earth to extragalatic cosmic rays causes mass extinctions. Here is the original paper describing the finding.
Announcements

Submission + - Today is System Administrator Appreciation Day (mcox.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Today is the 8th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day. It is always the last Friday in July and is the one day that SysAdmins are supposed to get the respect they deserve to be getting the other 364 days of the year. Today is the day that we wish everyone would considering the daunting tasks, small budgets, and ridiculous timelines that many SysAdmins face all year. Please thank them for everything they do for you and for your business. If you think you have a great SysAdmin today would be the day to nominate them for SysAdmin of the Year.

The idea for System Administrator Day was inspired by a print ad for a Hewlett-Packard laser jet printer. The ad showed lines of employees bringing gifts for the IT guy who made the purchase.

System Administrator Appreciation Day has, over the years, garnered support from many organizations, such as the League of Professional System Administrators (LOPSA), Friends In Tech (FIT), Sunbelt Software, and 'In The Trenches', a podcast for SysAdmins. Many geek-inspired websites, such as ThinkGeek.com (also a sponsor) designed special gift guides devoted to the new day of appreciation.
Education

Submission + - Testing Einstein's 'spooky action at a distance'

Submitted by smooth wombat
smooth wombat writes: Travelling to a time in the past is, as far as we know, not possible. However, Einstein postulated a faster-than-light effect known as 'spooky action at a distance'. The problem is, how do you test for such an effect? That test may now be here. If all goes well, hopefully by September 15th, John Cramer will have experimented with a beam of laser light which has been split in two to test Einstein's idea.

While he is only testing the quantum entanglement portion, changing one light beam and having the same change made in the other beam, his experiment might show that a change made in one beam shows up in the other beam before he actually makes the change.

An interesting sidenote is that the money for this project was raised not from the scientific community but from the public at large. His fans have sent him the money necessary to purchase the equipment to test Einstein's idea.
Music

Submission + - Putting Piracy in Perspective

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Over the past year, Slashdot has pointed to many industry claims and governmental pressure (here, here, and here) arguing that Canada as a piracy haven. Canadian law prof Michael Geist has produced Putting Canadian "Piracy" in Perspective, a video that demonstrates how the claims are hugely exaggerated. For example, it shows how despite the MPAA's claim of movie piracy, Canada was the industry's fastest growing market last year. Similarly, while the recording industry says Canada is the world's top P2P country, the data shows that the Canadian music industry is experiencing record gains and that most of the decline from the major labels is due to retail pricing pressures.
Television

Submission + - Uri Geller Accused of Bending Copyright Law (foxnews.com)

Submitted by
JagsLive
JagsLive writes: "FoxNews reports, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,288665,00.html " Geller's tireless attempts to silence his detractors have extended to the popular video-sharing site YouTube , landing him squarely in the center of a raging digital-age debate over controlling copyrights amid the massive volume of video and music clips flowing freely online. "All it takes is a single e-mail to completely censor someone on the Internet," said Jason Schultz, a lawyer for the online civil rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is suing Geller over an unflattering clip posted on YouTube for which he claimed a copyright ownership. ""
The Courts

Submission + - Motorists Sue Over 'Hot' Fuel 5

Submitted by i_like_spam
i_like_spam writes: Motorists in 13 states have filed lawsuits against big oil companies and gas retailers alleging unfair pricing practices related to fuel-pumping temperatures. From an industry standard developed in the 1920's, the price for a gallon of gasoline is based on the density of the fuel at a temperature of 60 degress F. A gallon of gas at higher temperatures is less dense, and therefore contains less energy. The lawsuits claim additional costs of 3 to 9 cents per gallon without temperature adjustments. The fuel industry claims that the costs of installing temerature-adjustment sensors on every pump would be prohibitively high. These sensors are already installed in Canada, however, where the colder temperatures favor consumers.
Censorship

Submission + - Pirate Bay Launches Uncensored Image Hosting (lawbean.com)

Submitted by
Spamicles
Spamicles writes: "The guys over at the Pirate Bay have launched a new, censorship-free image hosting website called BayImg. Users of the new service don't have to sign-up in order to upload images. However, they can assign a "removal code" to uploaded images, in case they want to delete the files after a while, and tags to categorize images. BayImg currently supports 100+ file formats, and supports uploading Zip and Rar archives. The maximum file size of uploads is 100MB. The article also discusses TPB's plans for launching a video streaming service that will potentially compete with YouTube."
The Courts

Submission + - Citizens Given Video Cameras to Monitor Police (foxnews.com)

Submitted by atommota
atommota writes: After years of complaints of police misconduct, some residents of high-crime neighborhoods in St. Louis are being given free video cameras to help them monitor officers. The American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri launched the project Wednesday after television crews last year broadcast video of officers punching and kicking a suspect who led police on a car chase. "The idea here is to level the playing field, so it's not just your word against the police's word," said Brenda Jones, executive director of the ACLU chapter.
This is in stark contrast to a report out of PA (and seen on Slashdot), where someone was arrested for felony wiretapping for doing the same thing.
Privacy

Submission + - FBI Finds It Overstepped in Collecting Data (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by
truthsearch
truthsearch writes: "An internal FBI audit has found that the bureau potentially violated the law or agency rules more than 1,000 times while collecting data about domestic phone calls, e-mails and financial transactions in recent years, far more than was documented in a Justice Department report in March. The new audit covers just 10 percent of the bureau's national security investigations since 2002. The vast majority of the new violations were instances in which telephone companies and Internet providers gave agents phone and e-mail records the agents did not request and were not authorized to collect. But two dozen of the newly-discovered violations involved agents' requests for information that U.S. law did not allow them to have."
Media

Submission + - Anti-DRM Activists Take on the BBC (freethebbc.info)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Activists from Binary Freedom Boston have launched a campaign calling on the BBC to release their content online without DRM or proprietary formats. You might remember the BBC asking us about this earlier and even though the public chose not to use DRM by a landslide, they still decided to use it. EMI and Amazon have already ditched DRM. How long before the BBC does?
Editorial

Submission + - MySpace photo sagas continue

Submitted by gwoodrow
gwoodrow writes: We've all heard the "fired because of myspace" issues, where a simple blog or picture gets someone canned. But even as it's getting worse, the targets are fighting back:

"Teacher in training Stacy Snyder was denied her education degree on the eve of graduation when Millersville University apparently found pictures on her MySpace page 'promoting underage drinking.' As a result, the 27-year-old mother of two had her teaching certificate withheld and was granted an English degree instead. In response, Snyder has filed a Federal lawsuit against the Pennsylvania university asking for her education diploma and certificate along with $75,000 in damages."

The offending picture? A picture from halloween 2005 of Stacy in a pirate outfit drinking from a cup.

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