Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
The Internet

Submission + - Morality of throttling a Local ISP? 3

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I work for a small (400 customers) local cable ISP. For the company the ISP is only a smaller side business, so my whole line of expertise lies in other areas, but since I know the most about Linux and networking I've been stuck into the role of part time sysadmin.

In examining our backbone and customer base I've found out that we are oversubscribed around 70:1 between our customer's bandwidth and our pipe. I've gone to the boss and showed him the bandwidth graphs of us sitting against the limit for the better part of the day, and instead of purchasing more bandwidth, he has asked me to start implementing traffic shaping and packet inspection against P2P users and other types of large downloading. Because this is in a certain limited market, the customers really have the choice between my work, and dial-up.

Being a person on the other side of that coin with my local ISP I'm struggling with the desire to give the customers I'm administering the best experience and the desire to do what my boss wants.

In my situation, what would you do ?
Communications

Submission + - Europe is testing 12.5 Gbs Wireless 1

Submitted by Lorien_the_first_one
Lorien_the_first_one writes: Science news reports that in Europe, a Breakthrough For Post-4G Communications has been announced. A public-private consortium known as IPHOBAC, has been developing new communications technology that is near commercialization now. From the article, "With much of the mobile world yet to migrate to 3G mobile communications, let alone 4G, European researchers are already working on a new technology able to deliver data wirelessly up to 12.5Gb/s.

"The technology — known as 'millimetre (mm)-wave' or microwave photonics — has commercial applications not just in telecommunications (access and in-house networks) but also in instrumentation, radar, security, radio astronomy and other fields."

That's great for Europe, but here in the US, I suspect that patent interests will try to stymie the adoption of such technology until they can get exclusive control of it here.

Comment Re:All this sounds nice, but there's another side. (Score 1) 1224

by SNR monkey (#25294125) Attached to: Ford To Introduce Restrictive Car Keys For Parents
I guess you didn't watch the video then. You should, it's for people who think like you.

I'll give you a quick recap, a 15 year old Volvo 940 is crashed into 3 year old Renault Modus. The host had to leverage himself against the Volvo to get the car door open after the crash and once you saw the inside, it was pretty clear that if you had been driving, you wouldn't be walking anywhere. The dummy probably would have to be cut out of the car, and the lower leg damage might have been serious enough to warrant amputation. The steering wheel ended up somewhere in the driver's face.

On the other hand, the Renault Modus door was opened with only slight effort with one hand. There was no interior deformation, so the driver would been able to walk away. The air bags protected both the driver and passenger.

The cars deform for a reason - they are built to dissipate the kinetic energy of a car crash. All of the energy that goes into deforming metal is not being directed into the passengers.

Your comment about rural America is a specific case. Even if it was true what you said about deformation (and it isn't), you are saying that you think it is better to be a little more safe in one specific set of circumstances, as opposed to safer on the whole (and I'd argue that you'd be safer one the whole with a newer-built for safety car). Perhaps you do 99.99% of your driving on rural roads, but don't think serious/fatal car accidents only happen to lone drivers in the middle of nowhere when there is no one around to help.

You remind me of some people I knew a few years ago. The argued that they were safer not wearing seatbelts, because if you were wearing a seatbelt and hit in the door, you were more likely to die. They didn't stop and consider that the type of side impact that they were trying to protect themselves against only happens a small percentage of the time, and in all other types of crashes, you are much safer wearing safety belts.

I suggest also checking out the FARS Encyclopedia

Do yourself a favor and watch that video. It will take 9 minutes of your time and it could save your life.
Security

Submission + - The Evolving Face of Credit Card Scams

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The 12 Angry Men have a follow up to their piece on the evolving cross sell scam credit card companies have begun using. Their new article concerns another evolving scam being employed, where users are racking up huge fees, and charges on cards which have never even been activated. The article goes deep into the standard way the scam plays out, as well as detailing some interesting history on how credit applications are processed, and where they are typically (and frighteningly) subject to tampering.
The Courts

Submission + - FBI Doesn't Tell Courts About Bogus Evidence

Submitted by dprovine
dprovine writes: According to a joint investigation by series of articles in The Washington Post and 60 Minutes, a forensic test used by the FBI for decades is known to be invalid. The National Academy of Science issued a report in 2004 that FBI investigators had given "problematic" testimony to juries. The FBI later stopped using "bullet lead analysis", but sent a letter to law enforcement officials saying that they still fully supported the science behind it. Hundreds of criminal defendants — some already convicted in part on the testimony of FBI experts — were not informed about the problems with the evidence used against them in court. Does anyone at the Justice Department even care about what effect this will have on how the public in general (and juries in particular) regards the trustworthiness of FBI testimony?
Moon

Submission + - Vote to Eliminate Leap Seconds 6

Submitted by Mortimer.CA
Mortimer.CA writes: As mentionted on Slahdot previously, there is a proposal to remove leap seconds from UTC (nee 'Greenwich' time). It wil be put to a vote to ITU member states, and if 70% agree, the leap second will be eliminated by 2013. There is some debate as to whether this change is a good or bad idea. One philosophical point opponents make is that the 'official' time on Earth should match the time of the sun and heavens. People with appliances that blink '12:00' can probably ignore this issue.
Security

Submission + - Simple Comm Technique Beats Quantum Crypto

Submitted by
Atario
Atario writes: "Spying is big business, and avoiding being spied on an even bigger one. So imagine if someone came up with a simple, cheap way of encrypting messages that is almost impossible to hack into?

American computer engineer Laszlo Kish at Texas A&M University in College Station claims to have done just that. He says the thermal properties of a simple wire can be exploited to create a secure communications channel, one that outperforms quantum cryptography keys."
Google

Submission + - Google search by employer not illegal, say judges

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A court of appeals for the federal circuit has upheld a ruling (PDF) against a man who sued his former employer for Googling his name before firing him. He had accused his former employer of participating in "ex parte" communications — off-the-record communications that are used to play a part in the final outcome of a decision — that ultimately affected the decision to fire him from his job. However, the three-judge panel ruled that an ex parte communication did not occur in the case when the employer used Google.

The man in question, David Mullins, was a government employee at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Weather Forecast Office in Indianapolis, IN. Through a series of events, Mullins' employer found that he had misused his government vehicle and government funds for his own purposes — such as sleeping in his car and falsifying hotel documents to receive reimbursements, withdrawing unauthorized amounts of cash from the company card, traveling to destinations sometimes hundreds of miles away from where he was supposed to be (and using his company card to fill up on gas there), and spending company time to visit friends and/or his children. Mullins' supervisor provided a 23-page document listing 102 separate instances of misconduct.

Mullins took issue with a Google search that Capell performed just before authorizing his firing. During this Google search, Capell found that Mullins had been fired from his previous job at the Smithsonian Institution and had been removed from Federal Service by the Air Force. Mullins argued that his right to fundamental fairness was violated when Capell performed the search and that she committed perjury when she stated that the search did not influence her decision to fire him.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070510-goog le-search-by-employer-not-illegal-say-judges.html
Announcements

Submission + - CNN to Release 2008 Debate under Creative Commons

Submitted by
remove office
remove office writes: "After calls from several prominent bloggers and a couple of presidential candidates themselves, CNN has agreed to release the footage from its upcoming June presidential debates uncopyrighted. Senator Barack Obama was the first candidate to call for all presidential debates to be released under Creative Commons, with fellow Demcoratic hopeful John Edwards following shortly afterwards. CNN will be the first to do so with their June 3rd and 5th Democratic and Republican debates. The NBC-Microsoft co-venture MSNBC hosted the first presidential debates recently but refused to release it under Creative Commons, opting instead to post only commercial-ridden clips online in Windows Media format."
Censorship

Journal Journal: RIAA kills internet radio

Journal by Reavantos
I am A internet radio DJ for DNDRadio.com (ddo.mmoradio.com) and i want to bring to your attention that the RIAA is at it again. this time, they are killing internet radio! "direct qoute from our website" The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has announced its decision on Internet Radio royalty rates, rejecting all of the arguments made by Webcasters (an MMORadio) and instead adopting the "per play" rate proposal put forth by SoundExchange (a digital music fee collection body created by the RIAA).
Windows

Submission + - Windows Vista - 19 months of usage and counting

Submitted by MyStuff
MyStuff writes: ZDNet blog Hardware 2.0 looks at the effect of having been using Windows Vista for over 18 months. It Windows Vista the indispensable upgrade that Microsoft wants you to think it is? This quote says it all:

Having been using Vista for over 18 months I believe that it's a huge improvement over XP and even though I still use XP I find that I miss many of the features that Vista offers.

However, I wouldn't call any of the changes earth-shattering. When I'm using XP systems I miss some of the features but not so much that they push me to upgrade any faster. Microsoft wants users to put down a lot of money for Vista when XP still has plenty of life in it. If you like living on the edge and want the latest then Vista is a must, but if you're happy with XP or you are the kind of person that doesn't actually use the OS that much, then you're probably safe holding back and waiting until you buy a new PC before getting Vista.

Slashdot Top Deals

Any given program, when running, is obsolete.

Close