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Comment Re:Oracle no threat? (Score 1) 215

by archermadness (#30866434) Attached to: Red Hat Support Continues To Flourish
We recently switched to OEL from RedHat, purely for the cost savings. Oracle even provides an 'up2date' package that switches a current RHEL box to OEL, and will give a discount based on current RHEL support licenses.

Considering that I've been at my current company for over 2 1/2 years, and haven't called Redhat or Oracle for Linux support, I'm not too worried about the quality of support.

In fact, like a lot of people, the only real reason we even pay for support is so that management feels good.
Businesses

Oracle Fined For Benchmark Claims 81

Posted by timothy from the ratchet-down-to-damn-lies dept.
pickens writes "Information Week reports that the Transaction Processing Council, which sets benchmarks for measuring database performance, has fined Oracle $10,000 for Oracle's ads published August 27 and September 3 on the front page of the Wall Street Journal which violate the 'fair use' rules that govern TPC members by 'comparing an existing TPC result to something that does not exist.' The ads said to expect a product announcement on October 14 that would demonstrate that some sort of hybrid Oracle-Sun setup would offer two-digit performance on the TPC-C online transaction processing test compared to IBM's 6 million transaction per minute result on its Power 595 running AIX and DB2. The TPC Council serves as a neutral forum where benchmark results are aired and compared. 'At the time of publication, they didn't have anything' submitted to the council says Michael Majdalany, administrator of the council adding that that Oracle is free to use TPC numbers once it submits an audited result for the Sun-Oracle system. Fines by the TPC are infrequent, with the last action — a $5,000 fine — levied against Microsoft in 2005 for unsupported claims about SQL Server. 'It takes a fairly serious violation to warrant a member being fined,' says Majdalany."
Social Networks

Happiness May Be Catching 176

Posted by kdawson from the little-help-from-my-friends dept.
chrb writes "The NY Times Magazine has an interesting article about research, based on the long-running Framingham Heart Study, modeling real world social networks. It seems that tendencies to be happy, not to smoke, and not to become obese are passed between nodes in a directed graph in a way that suggests such concepts are 'contagious.' Well-connected nodes in the graph (i.e., people with more friends) are more likely to be happier than less-connected nodes, even when the edges represent more distant friendships. Individuals quitting smoking, or becoming obese, influence not only their immediately connected friends but also friends of friends, with the effect sometimes skipping the intermediary node. The contagion effect is most noticeable when a tendency is passed from one person to another of the same sex — friends of the opposite sex, including spouses, are not as influential."
Image

Stoned Wallabies Make Crop Circles 104

Posted by samzenpus from the trippity-hop dept.
It's the tripnaut! writes "The BBC reports that Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around 'as high as a kite', a government official has said. 'The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles,' says Lara Giddings, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania. 'Then they crash,' she added."

Comment Re:Not Exactly for Taking a Photo (Score 1) 1232

by archermadness (#27934213) Attached to: Man Arrested For Taking Photo of Open ATM
It took me a minute to figure out what was wrong with this exchange. Tackling someone is assault--but threatening bodily harm unless someone complies (assuming you're not a cop doing his lawful duty, which Loomis Boy obviously wasn't) is coercion, which is just as illegal as assault.

In either case, Loomis Boy had a gun. In most states, the possession of a gun during a violent crime (like coercion) is a felony.

So a trained Loomis guard (had to have some training, or he wouldn't be licensed to carry) commited a felony in front of a room full of people. I'm actually having a bit of trouble believing this, especially since our victim, according to his own blog, never once asked anyone (Loomis, REI, or actual police) if they thought he had committed a crime. Would have been the first thing out of my mouth.

But, if it did happen that way, my guess is that the guard, at some level, knew that he f***ed up, and needed to stay on the offensive to keep from getting called for it.
GNU is Not Unix

NY Bill Proposes Tax Credit for Open Source Developers 111

Posted by timothy from the save-the-commonwealth-a-few-bucks dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Assemblymen Jonathan Bing and Micah Kellner, along with a number of co-sponsors, have introduced proposed legislation in New York State which would grant a tax credit to individuals acting as volunteers who develop open source programs. The idea of the credit is to ensure that volunteer developers, who could not otherwise deduct their expenses because they are not part of a 'business,' should nevertheless be able to receive a tax benefit for their contribution. The credit would be for 20% of the expenses incurred, up to $200. The preamble to the bill notes that the New York State Assembly itself currently uses 'Open Source programs such as Mozilla for email, Firefox for web browsing, and WebCal for electronic calendars,' and that these programs have led to significant cost savings to taxpayers. The preamble also cited a 2006 report authored by John Irons and Carl Malamud from the Center for American Progress detailing how Open Source software enhances a broader dissemination of knowledge and ideas."
Security

Submission + - UK can't read its own ID cards

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Despite introducing ID cards last November it has emerged that Britain has no readers that are able to the cards' microchip, containing the person's fingerprints and other biometric information. With cops and border guards unable to use the cards to check a person's identity critics are calling the £4.7bn scheme "farcical" and a "waste of time".
Your Rights Online

Universal Disk Encryption Spec Finalized 237

Posted by timothy from the surely-will-foil-the-nsa dept.
Lucas123 writes "Six of the largest disk manufacturers, along with encryption management software vendors, are backing three specifications finalized [Tuesday] that will eventually standardize the way encryption is used in firmware within hard disk drives and solid state disk drive controllers ensuring interoperability. Disk vendors are free to choose to use AES 128-bit or AES 256-bit keys depending on the level of security they want. 'This represents interoperability commitments from every disk drive maker on the planet,' said Robert Thibadeau, chief technologist at Seagate Technology."
Image

Sniping Could Be the Next Killer iPod App 461

Posted by samzenpus from the pull-up-your-kill-list dept.
An anonymous Coward writes "Knights Armament Corp. who supply sniper rifles to the US military have developed a iPod Touch mounting system and software for the US Army M110 sniper rifle system. The use of off the shelf hardware no doubt cut costs and allowed rapid development of this system." If it automatically played a theme song after every head shot, this would be the coolest rifle accessory ever.

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