ziguras.com

submitted by zedbloc
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I sat for the RHCSA a month ago, and a third of the way into it, realized I had no idea what I was doing. I hadn't been able to study due to a car accident, and it showed. It was like watching a three year old making dinner. Hell, Congress would have been more help to that workstation.

And yet, they passed me. Let me explain how little sense this makes:

For the majority of the exam, I just fumbled through man pages for basic commands trying to unfuck my syntax, remember switches, or just figure out if the shit they were asking me to do was even possible. I realized that without the GUI tools, I didn't even know how to identify which storage devices had been partitioned or not. Sometimes I just tried random words hoping that they would be commands. About a hundred times, this didn't work. One time, it did. If they audited my bash history, they probably thought I had a seizure. Maybe they passed me as a joke.

Once I realized I was well and truly fucked, I figured I would try the easy tasks, and take a crack at the impossible (ironically, impossible also translates as "would have taken six clicks in Windows") items just to give me an idea of what I would face on the inevitable re-take. When I realized that I had hit a wall with half of the items completely incomplete, I began installing random yum packages hoping that there would be a useful GUI tool in there somewhere.

The test ended with around 15-20% of the items unattempted. I only felt around 20% of the workload was done correctly. I called it a day and went home thinking of what I needed to study for next time.

Then the email came. 210 minimum passing score. Your score: 260. In my mind, I transposed the numbers, assuming that I could not possibly have passed. And yet, there it was. Certificate number and everything.

I still don't know what happened.

submitted by ICECREAMSOAP
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submitted by zedbloc
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An anonymous reader writes "A bit early, but just a reminder that January 28 is international Data Privacy Day in the U.S., Canada, and many European countries. Various events are being held around the globe: the head of the FTC opened a weekend forum on the topic by calling out Facebook and Google, the Ontario Privacy Commissioner is holding a symposium on 'Surveillance by Design', and of course Google recently announced they'll be tracking you more thoroughly in the future."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

submitted by zedbloc
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submitted by zedbloc
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sighted writes "This week's huge solar storm will benefit future astronauts, thanks to the rover Curiosity, now on its way to Mars. The rover is equipped with an instrument that measures the radiation exposure that could affect a human astronaut en route to the Red Planet. Scientists are just starting to pore over the data from the blast of particles. Don't worry about the poor robotic geologist, though: 'No harmful effects to the Mars Science Laboratory have been detected from this solar event,' says NASA."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

slew writes "This is a followup to this earlier story about 2 of 3 of Rambus's 'critical' patents being invalidated. Apparently now it's a hat-trick." There's something that seems unsavory and wasteful about a business environment in which a company's stock value "fluctuates sharply on its successes and failures in patent litigation and licensing." The linked article offers a brief but decent summary of the way Rambus has profited over the years from these now-invalidated patents.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I know that I should be using a contract and getting paid upfront. Yet I don't do these things. Now I have a client acting like a little kid saying that if I don't do this or that then they won't pay. It's basic stuff they're asking that I'd be happy to do, they just feel like being a little bitch about it. I suppose I should dump them, but I'm already close to being done with this job.

I suspect that they will pay, but who knows?

Suggestions?

submitted by dharma_police
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New submitter Krazy Kanuck writes "The White House is running a story on their OSTP blog that Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra is stepping down after being appointed to the post by President Obama in 2009. There is some mention of him returning to his home state of Virginia, and the Washington Post suggests a possible bid for lieutenant governor."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I've been doing design for a while and I'm trying to put together a portfolio site, but I'm having a really tough time putting "me" into it.

As a professional, how did you develop your personal brand?

submitted by coralto
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Hello,

I'm into web design as a hobby and would like to get better.

The extent of my knowledge is about 6 months experience in coding. I'm fairly capable in html and css. I have made several themes for tumblr etc. Also I have dabbled in Javascript but more so in the programming language: Java. (Made several mods in Minecraft)

So my question is this: is there any open source projects you know of that I can contribute to? Do these exist in the web-design community? If not, can I help your in any way or can you give me a project?

Thanks

submitted by IndieHaz
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Sparrowvsrevolution writes "At the Shmoocon security conference, researcher Brendan O'Connor plans to present the F-BOMB, or Falling or Ballistically-launched Object that Makes Backdoors. Built from just the disassembled hardware in a commercially-available PogoPlug mini-computer, a few tiny antennae, eight gigabytes of flash memory and some 3D-printed plastic casing, the F-BOMB serves as 3.5"-by-4"-by-1" spy computer. With a contract from DARPA, O'Connor has designed the cheap gadgets to be spy nodes, ready to be dropped from a drone, plugged inconspicuously into a wall socket, (one model impersonates a carbon monoxide detector) thrown over a barrier, or otherwise put into irretrievable positions to quietly collect data and send it back to the owner over any available Wi-Fi network. O'Connor built his prototypes with gear that added up to just $46 each, so sacrificing one for a single use is affordable."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A client I work with is convinced that desktop monitors all have an issue where colours are lighter on the bottom of a screen than the top, and gets me to darken up colours on the bottom. I don't notice this at all on my screen, or on any other screen I've ever used. Am I missing something, or is my client just a little loopy? Is this a common practice?

submitted by gilles_duceppticon
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I'm completely unfamiliar with WINE. I've searched for a comprehensive guide to getting EVE running via WINE, and all the guides I've found are pretty low quality. Anyone know how to run EVE via WINE and wiling to help me out?

Fedora 16 x86_64 with LXDE by the way.

submitted by dragonshardz
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sciencehabit writes "The North Star, a celestial beacon to navigators for centuries, may be slowly shrinking, according to a new analysis of more than 160 years of observations. The data suggest that the familiar fixture in the northern sky is shedding an Earth's mass worth of gas each year."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter BraveThumb writes "One independent rap group found it impossible to post their song on YouTube. When they tried to put up their video, they were informed that the copyright belonged to Universal Music, even though the rap group wasn't signed to any label. Another group working with Universal had used the music in a video of their own, which then accidentally leaked online. YouTube's filtering software then blocked the original. The Hollywood Reporter shares what happened and concludes by saying, 'For an industry that's pursuing copyright reform, the portrayal of a copyright regime that works against young artists can't be a good thing.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

submitted by gabomagno
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Situation NFS client is running on CentOS5.7 current. It is nfs mounting a NAS system on our network.

If after sitting idle for a few minutes (about 10) the server attempts to read or write a file to the mount it gets a file not found error. However if you ls the dir then retry the read or write, it succeeds. During the entire time /proc/mounts reports the mount as mounted.

We don't use autoFS or amd for this. Just a stock standard fstab entry. (IMHO a bit too stock but I've got bosses.) I seem to remember having seen something aout this before but so far google is not being my friend. Nor are my personal wiki or memory. I know I've seen this before, and if any of you can recall a fix I'd be forever grateful. Thanks.

submitted by linuxrebel
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An anonymous reader writes "Bitdefender reports that there exist viruses which, when they encounter other viruses, will merge and combine effects so that they create a new virus. 'A virus infects executable files; and a worm is an executable file. If the virus reaches a PC already compromised by a worm, the virus will infect the exe files on that PC — including the worm. When the worm spreads, it will carry the virus with it. Although this happens unintentionally, the combined features from both pieces of malware will inflict a lot more damage than the creators of either piece of malware intended. While most file infectors have inbuilt spreading mechanisms, just like Trojans and worms (spreading routines for RDP, USB, P2P, chat applications, or social networks), some cannot replicate or spread between computers. And it seems a great idea to “outsource” the transportation mechanism to a different piece of malware (i.e. by piggybacking a worm).'"

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