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Ask Slashdot: Best DNS Naming Scheme For Small/Medium Businesses?

Posted by timothy on Sunday July 06, @04:34PM
from the elephant01-elephant02-elephant03 dept.
Networking
Bandman writes "My business just purchased a couple dozen blades, and with our existing servers, this brings us to around 60 machines. We're geographically dispersed, and most of the users who need to connect to servers are not technical (if that matters). We used to use theme-based naming schemes, but we've been migrating to a more utilitarian system. I think it's clearer and more concise, but I've had some feedback from users who didn't find it understandable. What do you use for your internal DNS schemes? How big is your network, and what do you recommend for future expansion? Does it matter to your users at all?"

Your Rights Online: LegalTorrents Offers CC Works Via BitTorrent

Posted by timothy on Sunday July 06, @03:20PM
from the but-p2p-is-for-haxx0r-p1r@73z dept.
Media
An anonymous reader writes "A site called LegalTorrents has just launched that hosts trackers and seeds for digital media licensed under the Creative Commons license. ('We distribute content with the full permission of the rights holders and use the peer-2-peer file-sharing technology called Bittorrent.') The site even provides a way to donate money to artists you like. (LegalTorrents takes 15% off the top unless you are a member, which costs $50 one-time during the beta period.)" It's always good to see "legitimate" content distributed in ways that make it hard to demonize the distribution system itself — something Lawrence Lessig in particular has been doing for years, and his book "Free Culture" is one of the audiobooks available through LegalTorrents. Note that LegalTorrents has been around for a while now, rather than "just launched," but the current beta period won't last forever.

Technology: Keeping an Eye Out When Sites Go Down

Posted by timothy on Sunday July 06, @02:08PM
from the he-said-go-down dept.
The Internet
miller60 writes "Are major web sites going down more often? Or are outages simply more noticeable? The New York Times looks at the recent focus on downtime at services like Twitter, and the services that have sprung up to monitor outages. When a site goes down, word spreads rapidly, fueled by blogs and forums. But there have also been a series of outages with real-world impact, affecting commodities exchanges, thousands of web sites and online stores."

Hardware: 550 Metric Tons of Uranium Removed From Iraq

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday July 06, @01:01PM
from the war-on-gas-prices dept.
Power
Orion Blastar tips us to an AP report that 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" uranium has successfully been removed from Iraq. The operation lasted three months, and it required 37 separate flights and an 8,500-mile trip by boat to reach a port in Montreal. Quoting: "While yellowcake alone is not considered potent enough for a so-called 'dirty bomb' -- a conventional explosive that disperses radioactive material -- it could stir widespread panic if incorporated in a blast. Yellowcake also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment. The Iraqi government sold the yellowcake to a Canadian uranium producer, Cameco Corp., in a transaction the official described as worth 'tens of millions of dollars.' A Cameco spokesman, Lyle Krahn, declined to discuss the price, but said the yellowcake will be processed at facilities in Ontario for use in energy-producing reactors."
Linux: Gentoo 2008.0 Released 46 of 60 comments

Your Rights Online: Congress Tries To Strip Power From Anti-Wiretap Judge

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday July 06, @11:50AM
from the excellent-use-of-taxpayer-dollars dept.
The Courts
palegray.net writes "Congress is attempting to strip US District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of his power following his ruling against the government regarding immunity for telecoms in the NSA wiretapping case. Walker was appointed to the bench by President Bush, and has attempted to enforce existing prohibitions against warrantless wiretapping. From the Wired article: 'Walker, the chief judge of the Northern District of California, affirmed that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is the exclusive legal method for conducting surveillance inside the United States against suspected spies and [terrorists]. The Bush Administration argues that Congress's vote to authorize military force against Al Qaeda and the president's inherent war time powers were exceptions to the exclusivity provision.' The article makes the observation that Congress seems to be having difficulties bringing itself to enforce the laws that it has previously passed regarding wiretapping, and seems more interesting in silencing opposing viewpoints." Update: 07/06 16:15 GMT by SS: As several readers have noted, the vote would only limit Judge Walker with respect to this particular case. His other responsibilities would be unaffected.

IT: The Internationalization of Malware

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday July 06, @10:39AM
from the one-man's-trash dept.
Security
Ant brings us a write-up from a former malware analyst about the difficulties in fighting malware as it expands beyond English-language targets and into societies with different standards for privacy and security. Quoting: "One of the most fascinating facets of the increasing internationalization of malware is the cultural assumptions around such software. What is considered malware in the US may be commonly accepted in China or Japan, and this is largely due to the society that it exists in. Anti-cheating rootkits are very common in games released in these countries. What is considered to be invasive in the North American or European world is acceptable there. These anti-cheating rootkits would hook into the kernel space in a very invasive way, and have the behavioral characteristics of malware such as hooking into the keyboard driver. This made it very difficult from a purely technical standpoint to distinguish them."

Technology: Scaling Large Projects With Erlang

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday July 06, @09:28AM
from the right-tool-for-the-right-job dept.
Programming
Delchanat points out a blog entry which notes, "The two biggest computing-providers of today, Amazon as well as Google, are building their concurrent offerings on top of really concurrent programming languages and systems. Not only because they want to, but because they need to. If you want to build computing into a utility, you need large real-time systems running as sufficiently as possible. You need your technology to be able to scale in a similar way as other, comparable utilities or large real-time systems are scaling — utilities like telephony and electricity. Erlang is a language that has all the right properties and mechanisms in place to do what utility computing requires. Amazon SimpleDB is built upon Erlang. IMDB (owned by Amazon) is switching from Perl to Erlang. Google Gears is using Erlang-style concurrency, and the list goes on."

Your Rights Online: US Justice Dept. Sued For Cellular Tracking Information

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday July 06, @08:20AM
from the portable-deprivatizer dept.
Privacy
tpaudio writes "The ACLU and the EFF are suing the Department of Justice over how the government might be using GPS and location data from cell phones. With over 200 million Americans carrying cell phones, this could be pretty important for setting guidelines. We have already seen other frightening powers related to cell phones, such as 'cell mic tapping.'" The ACLU press release is also available, and it contains links to the complaint and the Freedom of Information Act request. We've previously discussed instances of cell phone tracking in the US and elsewhere.

IT: Bletchley Park Faces Financial Rescue

Posted by timothy on Sunday July 06, @07:08AM
from the admirable-work-deserves-commemoration dept.
Encryption
biscuitfever11 writes "Just two months ago it seemed that Bletchley Park, the home of Station X, Britain's secret code-breaking base during the War, was doomed as the codebreakers' huts rotted and the site fell into disrepair. But today Britain's Lottery Fund is set to step in with a grant to rescue the ailing heritage site. (There was an earlier story on ZDNet.)"

Technology: AVG Backs Down From Flooding the Internet

Posted by timothy on Sunday July 06, @03:41AM
from the time-off-for-good-behavior dept.
The Internet
Simon Wright writes "As a website that is featured heavily in many Google Australia search results, Whirlpool (Australia's largest technology forum) has been particularly affected by AVG's LinkScanner. We've seen a traffic increase as much as 12 hits per second from these bots. So we've actively and loudly campaigned against this move by AVG, encouraging all users of AVG 8.0 to uninstall the product. The discussion starts here. And AVG's backing down is posted here." From that URL:"'As promised, I am letting you know that the latest update for AVG Free edition has addressed and rectified the issue that [Whirlpool] have brought to our attention. This update has now been released to users and has also been built into the latest installation package for AVG Free.' — Peter Cameron, Managing Director, AVG Australia."

News: Your Computer As Your Singing Coach

Posted by timothy on Sunday July 06, @12:26AM
from the but-my-computer-already-is-my-singing-coach dept.
Music
Roland Piquepaille writes "Israeli researchers have developed an electronic ear to coach vibrato technique. Until now, the quality of a vibrato — the pulsating change of pitch in a singer's voice — could only be judged by voice experts. Now, a Tel Aviv University research team 'has successfully managed to train a computer to rate vibrato quality, and has created an application based on biofeedback to help singers improve their technique.' Interestingly, this research could be used for other applications, such as improving automated help centers, where computers could be trained 'to recognize a range of different emotions, such as anger and nervousness.'"

Science: New Pictures of White Knight Two and SpaceshipTwo

Posted by timothy on Saturday July 05, @09:58PM
from the what-they-look-like dept.
Space
soldeed writes "Over at the Virgin Galactic press site, there are new pictures of both White Knight Two and SpaceShip 2 during construction for media use. After seeing them, I can't help but wonder; Gee, what's in the box?"

Technology: KDE 4.1 Beta 2 – Two Steps Forward, One Step Back?

Posted by timothy on Saturday July 05, @08:23PM
from the everyone's-a-critic dept.
KDE
jammag writes "Linux pundit Bruce Byfield takes a look at the latest KDE beta and finds it wanting: 'Very likely, KDE users will have to wait for another release or two beyond 4.1 before the new version of KDE matches the features of earlier ones, especially in customization.' He notes that the second beta is still prone to unexplained crashes, and goes so far as to say, 'Everyone agrees now that KDE 4.0 was a mistake.' I'm not too sure about that — really, 'everyone?'"

Ask Slashdot: Digitizing Old Magazines?

Journal written by kesuki (321456) and posted by timothy on Saturday July 05, @07:00PM
from the back-issues-with-back-issues dept.
Data Storage
"I have a lot of old video game magazines, they're nice for playing 'classic games' because a lot of classics are impossible without the manual, and hard without a magazine (the magazine obviously negates the need for a manual usually). But they'd get damaged with a flatbed scanner, and digital cameras are hard to set up right for capturing old magazines. I know that old documents are digitally archived with very high-res cameras..." So, the question is, what is the best way to capture all the information in old magazines in digital format? Does anyone have a home-built rig taking after the angled-pair-of-scanners setup that Project Gutenburg uses?

Your Rights Online: Finding Fault With Google's Privacy Policy

Posted by timothy on Saturday July 05, @05:50PM
from the wonder-what-bill-joy-thinks-of-it dept.
Privacy
orenh writes "Viacom has recently obtained a court order that requires Google to hand over a complete list of every video watched by YouTube users. These logs will include the login names and IP addresses of the users. Google are now asking Viacom if they can anonymize the logs before turning them over; Viacom hasn't responded yet. But this privacy nightmare could have been greatly reduced if Google had anonymized the data in advance. Google's privacy policy states that they keep personally identifiable information for 18 months. There is no real reason to do so; Google can achieve everything they need even if they anonymize their search logs after just one month, and it's time users told them to do so."

Technology: In Japan, a 900 Gigabyte Upload Cap, Downloads Uncapped

Posted by timothy on Saturday July 05, @04:45PM
from the no-such-luck-in-tennessee dept.
The Internet
Raindeer writes "While the Broadband Bandits of the US are contemplating bandwidth caps between 5 gigabyte and 40 gigabyte per month, the largest telco in Japan has gone ahead and laid down some heavy caps for Japan's broadband addicts. From now on, if you upload more than 30 gigabyte per day, your network connection may be disconnected. Just think of it ... if you're in Japan and want to upload the HD movie you shot of yesterday's wedding, you soon might hit the limit. The downloaders do not face similar problems."

News: There's a Sucker Converted Every Minute

Posted by timothy on Saturday July 05, @03:38PM
from the and-probably-more-than-that dept.
Television
Ponca City, We love you writes "Once the US converts from analog to digital broadcasting next February, those who receive their signals over the air will need a converter box for older, non-digital models. Government-approved converter boxes sell for $60 or less and a government-issued $40 rebate coupon is available for the asking but that hasn't stopped companies like the Ohio-based Universal TechTronics from offering supposedly free converter boxes. The gimmick: the box is free, as long as you pay $88 for a five-year warranty, plus $9.30 shipping. Universal TechTronics seems to specialize in 'high-tech' products of questionable value, marketing the Cool Surge portable air cooler, 'a work of engineering genius from the China coast so advanced that no windows, vents, or freon are needed' that uses the same energy as a 60-watt light bulb. It works by blowing a stream of air over two ice packs that you have previously frozen in your freezer. What's the best tech scam you've heard of lately?"

Your Rights Online: In Iran, Blogging May Be Punishable By Death

Posted by timothy on Saturday July 05, @02:26PM
from the get-yourself-a-good-sharia-lawyer dept.
Censorship
An anonymous reader writes "In Iran, crimes such as apostasy (leaving a religion, in this case Islam) and armed robbery are already punishable by death, but a new bill in Iran aims to add to the list 'establishing weblogs and sites promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy,' effectively giving the government a free hand in silencing bloggers. The internet is widely used in Iran, despite its previous attempts at censorship. Will this change as the censorship grows more rampant?"
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