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Submission + - OS Library software under assault (stuff.co.nz)

Submitted by
abesottedphoenix
abesottedphoenix writes: "The rural Library responsible for the first Open Source Library catalogue is under attack from defence contractor PTFS. More than a decade after rolling out Koha (featured elsewhere in /. in NZ School Goes Open Source Amid Microsoft Mandate) they now find themselves in a battle to keep a generic Mori term within the public domain. The story is also covered at Radio NZ. http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/mnr/mnr-20111123-0725-horowhenua_library_astonished_us_firm_can_trademark_koha-048.mp3"

Comment Travel Light! (Score 1) 625

by m00by (#18350445) Attached to: Gadgets You Backpack Around the World With?
The less useless junk you bring with you, the less you have to carry. Especially if you are going to stay at places that are, shall we say, less than secure. My short, not very sweet story of traveling woe is that, I went to the Caribbean to visit a friend and his wife. I met him in Puerto Rico, and we traveled on from there to sint maarten, and then to saba. whilst on sint maarten, we were drugged and robbed, and the only thing I had left was my Backpack, whatever was in my pockets, and my digital camera. I lost a 20Gb iPod, 12" PowerBook, various cords and whatnot, clothes, and a nice bag. Granted, had I not felt the need to be able to offload my pictures to something else, I would not have taken the laptop

the moral of my story is: 1) be careful where you have a beer in a foreign country, and 2) don't sleep in your rental car. My friend lost a laptop, 60Gb iPod, camcorder, two digital cameras, and a bunch of other crap at the same time. Travel light, it's less to get stolen, and less to carry with you. =D
Bug

Journal Journal: OpenBSD's second remote hole in the default installation

Journal by Alioth

The OpenBSD project has just issued an advisory (and updated its website to reflect the change) that it now has its second remote root vulnerability in more than ten years. The exploit itself is performed with a specially crafted IPv6 ICMP packet, and is caused by a bug in the mbuf chains in the operating system kernel. The OpenBSD team have released a patch. The bug affects all versions of OpenBSD. Since
Space

Submission + - NASA Optimistic About Fuel Tank Repairs

Submitted by
DarkNemesis618
DarkNemesis618 writes: "NASA is now optimistic Atlantis' fuel tank will be able to be repaired in Florida. Due to a freak hail storm February 26 that had golf-sized hail chunks raining down on the launchpad put several thousand dings in the foam covering the external fuel tank as well as damaging 28 tiles on Atlantis' wing. 20 of the 28 tiles have been repaired and workers have started sanding down the damaged area of the tank itself. After it was decided that Atlantis needed to return to the VAB, NASA was unsure as to whether or not the tank could be repaired. But after bringing it back and doing more extensive inspections, the tank appeared to be in good enough shape that repairs could be done on the spot and a replacement was not necessary. This will allow for Atlantis to be launched late April for its construction mission to the ISS as well as not interfering with the remaining 4 launches planned this year. If the tank needed to be replaced, Atlantis would not have launched until June at the earliest."

Comment Lemme Ask Lord Nemesis (Score 1) 154

by abesottedphoenix (#17505530) Attached to: Open Project to Develop Renewable Energy System
Lord Nemesis, how do we get this to work?

Where it is theoretically something that's feasible, I'd have to say that you'd have to scale things very, very small indeed. Of course, this is theoretically possible to me on the same level that it's theoretically possible to capture all of the hot air from a committee meeting. On the other hand, with emerging nanotech, they might be able to invent something that can easily power a small gadget. It still looks like it would be least effort to employ either wind or solar in the meantime, though.

Comment Re:Sheer number of small servers (Score 1) 514

by Xenotrim (#14777321) Attached to: Windows Bumps Unix as Top Server OS
Actually, my agency is a heavy VMWare shop (roughly 150 virtual boxes). I have found that it increases the number of windows servers we have. Not only does every box we virtualize still need an individual windows license (DCs, file and print servers) but now it is so much quicker and cheaper for another group to 'buy' a server from us that they are requesting more then they normally would for testing and DR. One linux(ESX) server adds to our number of windows servers.

Comment Interesting (Score 2, Insightful) 298

by TJ6581 (#12248037) Attached to: Study Shows China Tightens Internet Filtering
How ervasive and effective can a system be when you are paying people to review it. There are 3 problems that spring to mind.

1) Doesn't it defeat the purpose of hiding something when you pay thousands of people to read it?

2) How effective can any system that relies on human judgement be?

3) What's to stop a small dedicated group of people from letting a few "un-authorized" pages slip through the cracks.
User Journal

Journal Journal: workin' hard....hardly workin'

Journal by m00by

you know that old saying "it's an awful slow day when you play frisbee in the server room"... man, it's a slow day... =D awfully slow... got out my official issue frisbee and threw it around for a few seconds with someone else. only hit the floor, no servers, so all is well... I've got to find another pet project to take on, actually, I do have a theory I'd like to test, but no handy linux boxen right now. and they get all huffy when you want to convert a production server to linux and stuff.
User Journal

Journal Journal: hrm

Journal by m00by

who knew that slashdot had all these features? some people did, but not me! ;) I just got modded up for the first time on two of my recent comments. weird. also sorta an interesting thing, being modded up... only up to 2 or so, but still. other people saw what I had to say as interesting...strange stuff... =D

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