Slashdot Mirror

Trailrunner7 writes with the report that "The Apache Software Foundation plans to have a fix available in the next day or so [Note: that means today, now. --Ed.] for the denial-of-service problem in Apache that was publicized late last week. The bug, which in some forms has been under discussion for more than four years, involves the way that the Web server handles certain overlapping range headers. The vulnerability is a denial-of-service bug, but it is considered serious because a remote attacker can essentially take a targeted server offline with little effort and resources. The Apache Software Foundation, which maintains the popular open-source Web server, updated its advisory on the vulnerability, saying that it expects to have a full fix available for the vulnerability within the next 24 hours."

jfruhlinger writes "Hurricane Irene is bearing down on the heavily populated U.S. Northeast Corridor. If you work in IT, you know that there are few things that are worse for electronics than water; so, what's your plan? Tom Henderson has come up with a checklist, which sensibly includes backing everything up, twice; not that you have time for it now, but for future reference you might want to consider just moving your whole data center to a location that's been conveniently pre-hardened, like a water tower or a boiler room." Note that Irene has been no joke in the Caribbean; in Puerto Rico (with relatively modern infrastructure), about a third of the island lost power.

After 14 years and over 15,000 stories posted, it's finally time for me to say Good-Bye to Slashdot. I created this place with my best friends in a run down house while still in college. Since then it has grown to be read by more than a million people, and has served Billions and Billions of Pages (yes, in my head I hear the voice). During my tenure I have done my best to keep Slashdot firmly grounded in its origins, but now it's time for someone else to come aboard and find the *future*. Personally I don't have any plans, but if you need to get ahold of me for any reason, you can find me as @cmdrtaco on twitter or Rob Malda on Google+. You could also update my mail address to be malda at cmdrtaco dot net. Hit the link below if you want to read some nostalgic saccharine crap that I need to get out of my system before I sign off for the last time.

It was the summer of '97 and I was a college kid working part time as a programmer at an ad agency. I wrote a simple CMS: practically my first perl program (I was so happy to not have to write in anything Microsoft!). I got an old DEC Alpha Multia in exchange for some freelance Java work. I stuffed it under my desk at work and registered the domain name in October. Jeff "Hemos" Bates chipped in on the registration fee. Within months we were serving thousands of people per day on a system that looked remarkably similar to the Slashdot you see today. It was simple: I just was sharing stories that I stumbled on with a small group of friends.

When I wrote the essay "Simple Solutions" a few months later, we doubled in traffic almost overnight. New hardware had to be purchased. Soon we exceeded the bandwidth capacity of our ISP and had to start co-locating. This meant banner ads. I barely made it through the end of college, working night and day on a site that was growing so fast, it was all I could do to keep up. We started making a little money and I eventually was able to quit my job and dedicate myself full-time to Slashdot. I barely graduated. Soon my friends followed me, eventually forming our company Blockstackers.

As my little hobby became a full blown business, it became clear that we needed help. The burden of running Sales and Marketing and HR it was to much for us. Slashdot was sold to Andover in '99. Since Slashdot was founded, my business card has read Blockstackers, Andover, Andover.net, VA Linux Systems, VA Software, OSDN, OSTG, SourceForge, and finally Geeknet. My title has changed several times: from my first card which read "Lies and Misinformation", until today when my title read "Editor-in-Chief of Slashdot.org". During that entire time, my job has been some version of the same thing: Make Slashdot Great. I always did my best, and I'd like to think that I got it right more often than not.

In the last 14 years, Slashdot has covered so many amazing events: The explosion of Linux. The rise of Google. The return of Apple. The Dot Com Bubble. The DMCA. 9/11. Wars. Elections. Numerous successful Shuttle Launches and one Disaster. Scientific Breakthroughs galore. Cool toys. Web2.0! Social Networking. Blogging! Podcasting! Micro-Blogging! The Lord of the Rings being filmed and an entire trilogy of new Star Wars. OMG Ponies!! So many moments that I could run this paragraph for hours with moments where we shared something important, meaningful, or just stupid. But the most important to me was my marriage proposal to Kathleen. Slashdot has posted Over 114,000 stories so far. And there will be many more to come. I just won't be the one picking them.

Slashdot has been read by kernel engineers and billionaires. By sys-admins and CEOs. By high school kids and government bureaucrats. But what brings so many of them together is that we are nerds. It never ceases to amaze me the similarities that I find between us all when I climb out of my dungeon and go meet readers. From the inside of some of the most wonderful places on earth, to conference halls with useless wireless connections, to cube farms, you guys always reminded me of why I started this thing in the first place. We share something important and unquantifiable.

The internet has changed dramatically since I started here, and that's part of my reason for leaving. For me, the Slashdot of today is fused to the Slashdot of the past. This makes it really hard to objectively consider the future of the site. While my corporate overlords and I haven't seen eye to eye on every decision in the last decade, I am certain that Jeff Drobick and the other executives at Geeknet will do their best. I am unquestionably confident in the abilities of the Slashdot editors and engineers- some of whom have been here just short of forever. They have proven themselves in the best and worst of conditions to be capable and dedicated.

As part of my resignation, after this story appears I will lose the ability to post. For me, this is the most bitter pill to swallow. Posting stories has always been my favorite part of the job. I created Slashdot to share these stories with my friends from IRC and school. It was never 'work'. Now I will have to go cold turkey. I'm walking away from the soapbox I built. I wish I could continue to post stories forever, but those closest to me know that if I maintained the ability to post, I'd never move on. I'll continue to read Slashdot and hopefully my occasional story submissions will make the cut. My old mantra: News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters still holds true here today. Nobody does it better.

As for what's next, I really don't know. I don't have a job lined up. I have no plans. I'm gonna spend some time with my boys and my wife. Read some books that have been on my shelf forever. Maybe it's time to write a book of my own.

If you want to get ahold of me, my email is now malda at cmdrtaco dot net. Geeknet has graciously agreed to continue to forward malda at slashdot dot org forever, but you should still update your address books if you care. I'm available on twitter as @cmdrtaco and Google+. My homepage hasn't been updated in a decade, but it's still CmdrTaco.net. And since I'm going to have to find a job in a few months, I'm on LinkedIn as well.

Thanks to everyone who helped build Slashdot over the years: the list is far to long to fit in this textfield but you know who you are, and you all know that I've got your back in a knife fight. Lastly, thanks to every Slashdot reader for giving me your time all these years. I hope I've wasted it efficiently and enjoyably.

Pants are optional.

donniebaseball23 writes "Sony's virtual world, PlayStation Home, has seen over 23 million users since launching in December 2008, and now the service is about to undergo its biggest change yet. Jack Buser, director of PlayStation Home, says Sony is planning a 'total redesign of the heart of PlayStation Home' for this Fall. The idea is to put games (particularly free-to-play games) front and center on Home, utilizing a central Hub with a theme park design. The Hub will 'integrate games, quests, community events and user-generated content, while providing players with additional navigation, shopping, socialization and entertainment options.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Ticketmaster has added Facebook integration to its interactive seat maps. The new feature allows you to share your live event plans by tagging yourself into your seat, and thus allowing your Facebook friends to see where you are sitting. If you have already purchased tickets for an event, you can also tag yourself at a later date."

bonch writes "As expected, Google will pay the government $500 million to settle a criminal probe into whether or not they profited from the display of ads from illegal online pharmacies. Google had vaguely referenced its settlement plans in a quarterly filing last May after charges that ads from rogue pharmacies were still appearing on Google despite a change in advertising policy. Drug advertising generates lucrative profits of about $1 billion, leading critics to charge that companies like Google aren't vigilant enough in policing their advertisers."

jfruhlinger writes "Verizon Wireless has revamped its video service; many Android phones can now stream full episodes from a number of current TV shows. You can even choose to just buy access for a day if you don't see yourself using the service often. Sounds great, right? Well, except for the part where all of Verizon's current smartphone plans have data caps — and the new service makes it awfully easy to go over them and incur overage charges."

Last month we discussed news that the James Webb Space Telescope, the planned successor to the HST, is on the budgetary chopping block. Now, an anonymous reader points out hopeful news from TPM's Idea Lab blog, which says NASA is trying to "spread the cost across the agency rather than just pulling from the $1 billion astrophysics division, with at least half of the funds coming from other areas of NASA's total $18 billion budget." According to Nature News, the decision resides with the White House's Office of Management and Budget, and support for the project depends in particular on Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD).

An anonymous reader writes "An article at the NY Times discusses the awkwardness of Google's recent purchase of Motorola Mobility, an acquisition widely thought to be motivated by Android patent concerns rather than a more straightforward business plan. From the article: 'While industry analysts and insiders say the rationale makes sense, they also say it leaves Motorola in an unusual position. ... Heightening the uncertainty is that the companies involved, both of which declined to comment, are in some ways as different as two technology companies can be. Google makes Internet services and software, thrives on high profit margins and distributes its product using giant data centers. Motorola makes hardware, has modest margins on a good day and moves its products on trucks and airplanes and through brick-and-mortar stores. ... "It's like, thanks for everything you did in the 20th century, but you're being bought by a search engine," said Roger Entner, a telecommunications industry analyst and founder of Recon Analytics, a market research firm. He added, "Nobody ever buys a company and leaves it alone."'"

dynamo52 writes "I have been tasked with replacing a managed Wi-Fi system for a mid-sized hotel. They have already selected Comcast to provide a 100mbps connection, which unfortunately must come in at one corner of the ~5-acre property. The hotel plans to provide this service for free, so there is no need for any type of billing management system, though it should be secured enough that the parking lot does not become a free Wi-Fi hotspot. Additionally, there is no ethernet infrastructure in place. The existing APs (hidden away in proprietary encasements) seem to be connected via telephone lines and the owners have strongly indicated they would prefer that no new wiring be installed. Have any Slashdotters implemented similar systems? Specifically, what hardware did you use and what special considerations should I take in designing this system?"

We recently discussed Ubisoft's plans to bring back their controversial always-connected DRM for their upcoming racing game Driver: San Francisco. Gamers raised their voices in protest, and it seems Ubisoft listened, scaling back (but not removing) the DRM. Instead of requiring a continuous connection, the game will now require a connection only when the game launches. Unfortunately for Ubisoft, complaints are now arising that the company misled players with regard to the DRM implemented in the PC port of From Dust.

Hugh Pickens writes "AT&T is scrapping its 1,000-texts-for-ten-bucks plan and replacing it with a plan that offers unlimited texts for $20. Users who don't want the unlimited plan can opt to pay 20 cents per text. Current AT&T subscribers are grandfathered in, so you can stick with whatever plan you selected when you signed your contract. 'The vast majority of our messaging customers prefer unlimited plans and with text messaging growth stronger than ever, that number continues to climb among new customers,' says AT&T. The news has not been received warmly in the tech blogosphere. 'AT&T calls this "streamlining." We call it what it is: an outrageous, gigantic scam,' writes Sam Biddle in Gizmodo. 'AT&T's taken away new customers' option to spend less, whereas carriers like Verizon still offer tiered texting plans for varying budgets.'"

Apocryphos writes "The government agency that helped invent the Internet now wants to do the same for travel to the stars. In what is perhaps the ultimate startup opportunity, DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, plans to award some lucky, ambitious and star-struck organization roughly $500,000 in seed money to begin studying what it would take — organizationally, technically, sociologically and ethically — to send humans to another star, a challenge of such magnitude that the study alone could take a hundred years."

roccomaglio writes "The suspect who is accused of planning to bomb his high school in Tampa updated his Facebook status with the following: 'The weirdest thing happened today...when my homie Nic Peezy was trying to connect to a wireless network the connections list came up and one of them was called: FBI_SURVEILLANCE_VAN,' The FBI might want to revisit their wireless network naming conventions."

RockDoctor writes "Reports indicate that a suspect has been arrested in the Australian 'collar bomb' hostage/extortion case. The allegation is that the suspect had set up a Gmail account, through which he (allegedly) planned to communicate with the extortion victims and arrange delivery of the payment. Unfortunately for him, records were kept showing the location and time the account was set up, and also for a number of accesses. This information, combined with 'CCTV footage and motor vehicle records,' allowed the police to put an identity to the suspect, and arrange for his arrest. So, if you're planning an extortion scheme, don't drive your car to the internet cafe, don't set up the account from an airport, wear anonymous clothes (like Jason Bourne does?) and do all your accesses through hacked shell accounts somewhere in Outer Mongolia. But, this being Slashdot, everyone knew that already."

bonch writes "After seven years and a highpoint of 12 million subscribers, World of Warcraft has seen a loss of nearly one million subscribers in the last six months for the first time in its history, according to Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime during an Activision earnings call. However, the game remains the most popular MMO, and Morhaime said Blizzard plans to reverse the trend with fresh content. Some believe that the loss in subscriber interest is a sign of the game's inevitable twilight years. Blizzard also recently received a trademark for 'Mists of Pandaria,' fueling speculation about the next expansion pack."

Okian Warrior writes "After taking heat from the ACLU and being hacked by Anonymous for shutting down cellphone service to four stations last week, BART kept cell service on during Monday's protests. Officials at Bay Area Rapid Transit decided Monday that cutting cellphone service to thwart another planned protest would cause more trouble than the protests themselves. Instead, four stations were temporarily closed, creating a chaotic rush-hour commute."

pbahra writes "When you think of product placement on television you tend to think of cumbersome 1950s examples where the actor would cheesily turn to camera and hold up, say, a bar of soap—where do you think the sobriquet soap opera came from—to deliver his line. Perhaps to save all of us the artistic murder, the practice was prohibited in Europe, but recently the prohibition has been relaxed and a U.K. start up is offering digital producers the chance to inject products realistically in post production with full directorial control. The problem with existing physical product placement is that there are no clear business plans, and the process is incredibly slow. In Europe, legal constraints prohibit directors from re-writing scripts to include products, so any placement has to be done at the creative stage."

Trailrunner7 writes "Finding Aaron Barr at this year's DEFCON hacker conference in Las Vegas was like a giant game of 'Where's Waldo.' Given the events of the past year, you can hardly blame him for keeping a low profile. First there was the attack on him and his then-employer, HBGary Federal, his decision to part ways with HBGary, his work to rehabilitate his image and turn his personal misfortunes into a 'teaching moment' for the industry, and then the legal wrangling in recent weeks that threw cold water on his plans to take part in a panel discussion about Anonymous at DEFCON. Barr was courted by numerous news outlets at the show, including the mainstream media. But he preferred, for the most part, to keep his own counsel. But he offered his thoughts to Threatpost on the experience of being at the conference, what the attack by Anonymous has done to him and whether it's possible for the group to turn its attentions to more constructive pursuits."

mormop writes "The Chinese government has praised UK Prime Minister David Cameron's plan for censoring social networking sites at times when the government feels threatened, believing it legitimizes China own behavior. Quoting Chinese state media website Global Times: 'Britain's new attitude will help appease the quarrels between East and West over the future management of the Internet. As for China, advocates of an unlimited development of the Internet should think twice about their original ideas.'"