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Comment Re:talking about data how safe are the data center (Score 2, Interesting) 562

by kiwi_fb (#35544142) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How Prepared Are You For a Major Emergency?

Posting from Christchurch New Zealand. I can talk about a data center here. The recent earthquake was the second one. We had a first one last September.

Last September the UPS lasted until the diesel generator kicked in. There was never any downtime, that includes the BlueGene/L. Not sure how long the fuel was meant to last but it was enough.

February's earthquake was another matter. There is now a 5mm wide crack in the middle of the data center (extends about 20m on each side of the building). This generated dust, the automatic system were triggered as for a fire and air conditioning was cut off immediately and then the systems were shutdown automatically in the next five minutes. The gas to extinguish fire was not released, we are not sure why yet. The fuel was not useful at all last February.
The Courts

Journal SPAM: California City Sues Man for Canceling Trash Collection 4

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius

Eddie House claims to have reduced his waste to nearly nothing out of concern for the environment. He now faces a lawsuit from San Carlos for canceling his garbage-collection service. The suit seeks a permanent injunction forcing House to maintain garbage service. City officials are also seeking to recoup from House the costs of the lawsuit. The city claims that House broke the municipal code requi
Security

Journal SPAM: E-Voting Undermines Public Confidence In Elections 5

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius

Techdirt columnist, Timothy Lee, hit the metaphoric nail on the head, claiming that e-Voting undermines the public perception of election fairness - even when there is no evidence of wrong doing. "In a well-designed voting system, voters shouldn't have to take anyone's actions on faith. The entire process should be simple and transparent, so that anyone can observe it and verify that it was carried out correctly. The complexit
The Courts

Journal SPAM: Judge On CIA Video Tapes: "It Boggles The Mind" 5

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius

The Federal Judge who ordered the CIA to maintain all evidence related to investigations of "harsh interrogations" committed by the Agency, voiced his skepticism about the destruction of videotapes, during a hearing over a freedom of information request involving the tapes. "I'm asked to believe that actual motion pictures, videotapes, of the relationship between interrogators and priso
The Internet

Submission + - What is Fair Use in the Digital Age?

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Rick Cotton, general counsel of NBC, and Tim Wu, professor at Columbia Law school, continue their debate about copyright issues and technology on Saul Hansell's blog at the New York Times discussing Fair Use of commercial music and video as the raw materials for new creations. Cotton says that content protection on the broadband internet is really not a debate about fair use The fact that users can "take three or four movies and splice together their favorite action scenes and post them online does not mean that these uses are fair. There needs to be something more — something that truly injects some degree of original contribution from the maker other than just the assembly of unchanged copies of different copyrighted works." Wu's position is that "it is time to recognize a simpler principle for fair use: work that adds to the value of the original, as opposed to substituting for the original, is fair use. This simple concept would bring much clarity to the problems of secondary authorship on the web." This is a continuation of the previous discussion on copy protection."
Businesses

Submission + - Make legacy formats public domain

Submitted by
SgtChaireBourne
SgtChaireBourne writes: "NLnet, a Dutch foundation for an open information society, calls for the maker of a widely used office suite to release its depreciated formats into the public domain. The maker of the infamous productivity suits has made large efforts during the last year to move against the industry backed standard, the OpenDocument Format (ISO/IEC 26300). These efforts have been producing a lot of commentary regarding the amount of data bound up in the Redmond-based company's undocumented, proprietary, binary specifications. It's a nasty situation to end up with files that cannot be read because the sole vendor with the documentation for the files has withdrawn permission. ODF is the way forward, or a step forward at the least, with new documents. But for the old documents in the legacy formats, the cannot be read without supporting software and that support requires full access to the specifications."
The Internet

Submission + - Is Copy Protection Needed or Futile?

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Columnist Saul Hansell is hosting a debate about copyright issues and technology on his blog at the New York Times . On one side Rick Cotton, the general counsel of NBC Universal, says that anyone who is intellectually honest must "acknowledge, confront and speak to the tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content that is currently occurring in the digital world" and that we should be "identify workable, flexible and effective approaches that reduce piracy without being intrusive and that fully respect other interests such as privacy and fair use." Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, responds that "locks will be broken, and so a business model that depends on locking is very vulnerable" adding that locks may form a part of certain successful business models but "too much reliance on locking can seriously backfire." Wu and Cotton will respond to each other and to comments by readers today."
Television

Submission + - Blu-ray won't play Profile 2.0 Discs 4

Submitted by
Reservoir Hill
Reservoir Hill writes: "Blu-ray may have taken a commanding lead in the next-generation format war but Betanews is reporting that early supporters of Blu-ray will be left out in the cold when the Blu-ray Disc Association introduces BD Profile 2.0, expected to arrive in October. Unlike HD DVD, which mandated features such as local storage, a second video and audio decoder for picture-in-picture, and a network connection from the very beginning, the companies behind Blu-ray took a different approach to keep costs down. "We should have waited another year to introduce Blu-ray to the public, but the format war changed the situation," said one manufacturer. Representatives at the Blu-ray booth at CES said that the PlayStation 3 is currently the only player they would recommend, due to upcoming changes to the platform. Asked if they were concerned about a backlash from early adopters who supported the format from the beginning, one representative said: "They knew what they were getting into.""
Music

Submission + - "Cone of Silence" Possible say Scientists

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "The "Cone of Silence," once a staple of 1960's television shows, is possible say scientists at Duke University who first demonstrated a working "cloak of invisibility" that works at microwave frequencies in 2006. Such a cloak designed for audio frequencies might hide submarines in the ocean from detection by sonar or improve the acoustics of a concert hall by effectively flattening a structural beam. Although the theory used to design such acoustic devices so far isn't as general as the one used to devise the microwave cloak, the finding nonetheless paves the way for other acoustic devices. "We've now shown that both 2-D and 3-D acoustic cloaks theoretically do exist," says Researcher Steven Cummer. "It opens up the door to make the physical shape of an object different from its acoustic shape.""
Media

Journal SPAM: DRM Nightmare - Use HD and Lose Previously Purchased Media 7

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius

Davis Freeberg ran into the nightmare scenario of losing access to his DRM-disabled purchases, simply by upgrading a PC monitor. "I recently purchased a new HD monitor, but when I installed it, I lost the streaming capabilities on Netflix's website. When I tried to troubleshoot the issue, I had to agree to let Netflix "reset my DRM" by destroying my Amazon.com files. Because Hollywood wants to punish people for using techn
The Courts

Submission + - EU Encouraging Standardized DRM, Licensing (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "The European Commission is trying to encourage a standard licensing and DRM scheme for all of Europe and "cooperation procedures" and "codes of conduct" for ISPs, copyright holders, and customers. No legislation has been proposed yet, but the "cooperation procedures" sound like a push for an EU version of the DMCA Takedown Notices, which are already routinely sent to people outside the US. And while simplified licensing might be nice, it's interesting that they don't appear to understand the inherent tension between standardization, interoperability and DRM — break once, copy everywhere."
Television

Submission + - "You Don't Understand Our Audience" (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by
MBCook
MBCook writes: "Technology Review has a fantastic seven page piece titled "You Don't Understand Our Audience" (printer version, summed up by Ars) by former Dateline correspondent John Hockenberry. In it he discusses how NBC (and the networks at large) has missed and wasted opportunities brought by the Internet; and how they work to hard to get viewers at the expense of actual news. The story describes various events such as turning down a report on who al-Qaeda is for a reality show about firefighters, having to tie a story about a radical student group into American Dreams, and the failure to cover events like Kurt Cobain suicide (except as an Andy Rooney complaint piece)."

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