Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category

Linux Mint 6 “Felicia” KDE CE released!

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

On behalf of the team I am thrilled to announce the release of Linux Mint 6 KDE. Congratulations to Jamie Boo Birse, maintainer of this edition, for the integration of a fantastic KDE4 desktop and the excellent work he’s done for this release.

This edition is based on Kubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, Linux 2.6.27, Xorg 7.4 and it comes with KDE 4.2 and Amarok 2.0. For a complete list of new features read: Whats new in Felicia KDE CE?

System requirements and known issues:

You need 256MB RAM to run the Live CD or install. To install, you need a minimum of 4GB of free space on your hard disk. Once installed, Linux Mint 6 KDE CE can run with 256MB RAM, but it is strongly recommended to have at least 512MB RAM.
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Posted in Internet, Software | No Comments »

Destroy the Internet with a hacksaw?

Sunday, April 19th, 2009

This morning many people in Silicon Valley woke up without 911 service, Internet, cellular phones, and in some cases TV. Web sites were impacted and Internet traffic between a few major datacenters stopped flowing. Several of our employees were cut off from the Internet and phone service.

AT&T put out a press release stating that there was a fiber cut, but to make this happen, there had to be several cuts. According to several employees that work at AT&T, it may have been done by the very people that repair this stuff, the Communication Workers of America Union (CWA).

This of course is speculation on behalf of these individuals. The cuts could have also been framed to make it look like it was done by a competent group, someone that knows where the major fibers are sitting inside specific manholes. However, the CWA contract to do work for AT&T expired last Saturday night. According to various press releases from CWA, “five of CWA’s six agreements with various AT&T companies expire at midnight, April 4, 2009″. The cuts were clean, done apparently by a hacksaw. The first major cut went down around 2 AM in the South East Bay which isolated the city of Santa Cruz. Another cut around 4 AM took out the major Metromedia Fiber Network (MFN) in the San Francisco bay area as well.
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Posted in Interesting, Internet, World | No Comments »

Google Privacy Blunder Shares Your Docs Without Permission

Monday, March 9th, 2009

In a privacy error that underscores some of the biggest problems surrounding cloud-based services, Google has sent a notice to a number of users of its Document and Spreadsheets products stating that it may have inadvertently shared some of their documents with contacts who were never granted access to them.

According to the notice, this sharing was limited to people “with whom you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document” - a vague statement that sounds like it could add up to quite a few people. The notice states that only text documents and presentations are affected, not spreadsheets, and provides links to each of the user’s documents that may have been shared in error.

I’ve contacted Google for confirmation and haven’t heard back, but this seems to be legit - our tipster says that he had previously shared the document listed in his notice, but now it has been reset to show 0 collaborators (one of the precautionary measures mentioned in the note).
Update: Google has confirmed that the note is real, and says that it was an isolated incident affecting less than .05% of all documents. The damage may not be widespread, but it’s still an unsettling lapse in security.
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Posted in Internet | No Comments »