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Ubuntu

Submission + - Canonical Begins Tracking Ubuntu Installations (phoronix.com)

suraj.sun writes: Canonical Begins Tracking Ubuntu Installations, On a Daily Basis

Just uploaded to the Ubuntu Lucid repository for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (and we imagine it will appear shortly in Maverick too for Ubuntu 10.10) is a new package called canonical-census, which marks its initial release. Curious about what this package provides, we did some digging and found it's for tracking Ubuntu installations by sending an "I am alive" ping to Canonical on a daily basis.

When the canonical-census package is installed, the program is to be added to the daily Cron jobs to be executed so that each day it will report to Canonical over HTTP the number of times this system previously sent to Canonical (this counter is stored locally and with it running on a daily basis it's thereby indicating how many days the Ubuntu installation has been active), the Ubuntu distributor channel, the product name as acquired by the system's DMI information, and which Ubuntu release is being used. That's all that canonical-census does, at least for now. Previously there haven't been such Ubuntu tracking measures attempted by Canonical.

Phoronix: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODQ5MA

Comment Re:There goes the Eternal September (Score 1) 193

The continuation of Eternal September has nothing to do with AOL. Google Groups effectively killed Usenet as soon as they started offering posting access while doing nothing to educate new users on exactly what Usenet is. Google Groups is now the source of the vast majority of current Usenet spam, the service is pretty much broken, and since it isn't a potential revenue stream, Google all but ignores it.
Government

Major ISPs Challenge UK's Digital Economy Act 107

Techmeology writes "TalkTalk and BT, two of the UK's largest ISPs, seek to legally challenge the UK's Digital Economy Act, which was rushed through parliament during its last days prior to the election. TalkTalk and BT argue that the DEA infringes human rights and places large ISPs (with over 400,000 customers) at a disadvantage. They also believe the DEA could conflict with existing European Legislation such as the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive, and the E-Commerce Directive — the latter stating that ISPs are not responsible for the actions of their customers. The Act, which saw twenty thousand letters sent to MPs in protest, contains measures to see websites suspected of distributing illegal material blocked, and Internet users disconnected or reported to copyright holders."
Security

Cisco Says Vegas Conference Attendees' Information Was Leaked 97

Julie188 writes "Thousands of people got a nasty e-mail this morning from Cisco. The company was warning people that its attendee registration database for its Cisco Live 2010 event was hacked. Cisco Live 2010 is the company's annual user conference, held last week in Las Vegas with an estimated 18,000 in attendance. If it's not embarrassing enough for a company that sells security gear to get hacked, the e-mail also went out to people who didn't register and didn't attend the event. That raises questions about exactly what database was pried open and how bad the damage is. Cisco's e-mail said the hole was quickly closed and only business-card type information was exposed."
Google

Google Struggles To Give Away $10 Million 145

theodp writes "On Google's 10th Birthday in 2008, the search giant promised $10 million to the best five ideas for using technology to improve the world, through Project 10^100. CNN reports that while Google's intentions were good, of course, the company's follow-through leaves much to be desired. Google announced the cash prize contest in September 2008 and closed public voting on 16 finalists chosen from over 150,000 ideas in October 2009. Over eight months later, the company has yet to announce the winners. 'While genocide and other pressing problems relentlessly advance,' remarked contest finalist Daniel Meyerowitz to Wired.com, 'it would seem that Project 10^100 does not.'"
Television

Sidestepping A-to-D Convertors For Town Government's Cable TV? 539

jake-itguy writes "I am the IT guy for a small town municipality. Comcast called me the other day and told me I had to have a digital-to-analog converter for each TV in the municipality, as Comcast is turning off analog cable in September. I did a quick count, and we have 32 TVs across 6 buildings (22 being in the police and fire departments). Most of the TVs are hung on the walls. I told Comcast having a box for each TV was not acceptable and wanted a different solution. Comcast told me there was no other solution." Read on for more details of the situation, and to see if you can offer Jake any advice for distributing cable service within his Indiana town.
Government

California's Santa Clara County Bans Happy Meal Toys 756

WrongSizeGlass writes "The L.A. Times is reporting that Santa Clara County officials have voted to ban toys and other promotions that restaurants offer with high-calorie children's meals. 'This ordinance prevents restaurants from preying on children's love of toys' to sell high-calorie, unhealthful food, said Supervisor Ken Yeager, who sponsored the measure. 'This ordinance breaks the link between unhealthy food and prizes.' Supervisor Donald Gage, who voted against the measure, said, 'If you can't control a 3-year-old child for a toy, God save you when they get to be teenagers.' The vote was 3 - 2 in favor of the ban."
Iphone

Apple Just Says Yes To iPhone Smoking Game 192

ZosX sends along a puff piece from Wired's Brian X. Chen: "Apple on Monday approved Puff Puff Pass, a $2 game whose objective is to pass a cigarette or pipe around and puff it as many times as you can within a set duration. So much for taking the high road, Apple. The game allows you to choose between smoking a cigarette, a cigar, and a pipe. Then you select the number of people you'd like to light up with (up to five), the amount of time, and a place to smoke (outdoors or indoors). And you're ready to get right on puffing."

Comment Re:Imagine (Score 2, Informative) 162

Not only did the Mac Plus not have a hard drive, the 800k floppy drive it did have was notoriously fickle and unreliable, often killing more than a few disks on its way to the hardware graveyard. When I had the chance to clean out (and keep whatever I wanted from) a storage container full of discarded educational hardware (mostly Macs from the Plus era up to the IIsi era), I learned very quickly that Pluses were pretty much a waste of time to haul home, especially when the modular-plug keyboard (this was pre-ADB) was dead as well.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Oldskool Audio Rigging

I decided to have some fun today, and went pawn-shop browsing. Lo and behold, I come across a Sansui G-3500! I knew what I had to do - so I bought it (for $5!) and headed home with it.

Feed Clearing swap and hibernation files properly (theregister.com)

Two neglected open books

Privacy workshop Most privacy-conscious users are familiar with deleting files securely, that is, destructively with overwriting and with wiping free space on their disks. But two items that often get overlooked are the swap file (or swap partition), and the hibernation file.


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