sysadmin.ie

AustinSlacker writes "An Iowa school district's lunch program asks children as young as 5 years old to memorize a four-digit PIN code so it can monitor what they eat in the school cafeteria - prompting some parents to claim it's an unhealthy case of 'Big Brother.' An over reaction by parents or an unnecessary invasion of privacy?"

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All Steve Jobs's horses and all Steve Jobs's men ...

Just hours after Apple released iOS 4.1 to great fanfare, hardware hackers found a way to jailbreak devices that run the new operating system. More surprising still, there doesn't appear to be anything Steve Jobs can do to stop them in the near future.…

Reg Guide to Improving Systems Agility - Free Download!

Sergey Brin gets in your head

Analysis Google is on a mission to make web search as fast as the human brain will allow. On Wednesday morning in San Francisco, as she unveiled Google Instant, a radical overhaul of the company's search engine that updates search results as you type, uber-Googler Marissa Mayer called it "search at the speed of thought." We can safely classify that as an exaggeration for effect, but Mayer's bon mot at least gets to the heart of Google's intentions.…

Sonny Yatsen writes "A new study suggests that the Viking Landers might have found organic compounds on Mars, but failed to recognize them because of the methodology used to detect organics. The findings may suggest specific strategies that would improve on the way organic compounds are detected on the red planet."

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Founders sing a new Songza

Digital music site Amie Street has been bought by Amazon, but the founders of the user-fueled music service aren't abandoning their efforts to bring social networking to music lovers.…

Waledac's 276 domain names seized

A federal magistrate judge has recommended that Microsoft be given ownership of 276 internet addresses used to control “Waledac,” a massive botnet that the software company has been working to bring down.…

Trestles gives Opteron 6100s some love

Appro International, the upstart HPC cluster maker, has got another big order from its biggest customer, the San Diego Supercomputer Center.…

AC95 writes "The FTC wants to give users a browser-based tool for opting out of online behavioral tracking, a proposal that has privacy advocates cheering and online advertisers up in arms. A key issue, says FTC attorney Loretta Garrison, is that while most consumers know they're tracked online, they don't fully appreciate how much information is collected. Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, worries about knee-jerk legislation criminalizing mistakes that are an inherent part of applying any new technology."

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CouchIO no more

NoSQL start-up CouchIO is targeting mobile and clouds after just a year of trying to monetize the company's CouchDB document store.…

Reg Guide to Improving Systems Agility - Free Download!

An anonymous reader writes "Product placement to promote your brand just isn't enough any more. These days, apparently, some companies are resorting to anti-product placement in order to get competitors' products in the hands of 'anti-stars.' The key example being Snooki from Jersey Shore, who supposedly is being sent handbags by companies... but the bags being sent are of competitors' handbags as a way to avoid Snooki carrying their own handbag, and thus potentially damaging their brand."

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An anonymous reader writes "Swedish researchers have devised a way to turn bioluminescent jellyfish into solar cells. It works like this: the green fluorescent protein (GFP) that makes the Aequorea victoria glow is simply dripped onto a silicon dioxide substrate between two electrodes. The protein works itself into strands between the electrodes. When ultraviolet light is shined on the circuit, voila, the GFP absorbs photons and emits electrons, generating a current. The GFP-powered cells work like dye-sensitized solar cells, but don't require expensive materials such as titanium dioxide."

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itwbennett writes "If Larry Page and Sergey Brin had stuck with the first name for their search engine, we'd be 'BackRubbing' instead of Googling. But the fun doesn't stop there. The unforgettable Go Daddy was first saddled with the eminently Seussian moniker 'Jomax Technologies.' And as for Yahoo!... its original name just rolled off the tongue: 'Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web.'"

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MexiCali59 writes "Four of California's largest school districts will be trying something new on eighth-grade algebra students this year: giving them iPads instead of textbooks. The devices come pre-loaded with a digital version of the text, allowing students to view teaching videos, receive homework assistance and input assignment all without picking up a pen or paper. If the students with iPads turn out to do improve at a faster pace than their peers as expected, the program could soon spread throughout the Golden State."

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Eat or be eaten

The global economy might not be on the mend as much as we would like, but there are plenty of IT behemoths sitting on big bags of cash, and tongues are a-wagging today about data warehousing appliance maker Netezza and security and systems software maker Symantec both being possible takeover targets.…

maclizard writes "The town's name is real. But when Josh Moore tried to tell Seattle-based Microsoft and the enforcement team at Xbox Live that Fort gay was a real place, they wouldn't take his word for it. Or Google it. Or check the U.S. Postal Service website for a ZIP code. I personally feel for those of you from Big Bone Lick, KY"

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bossanovalithium writes "Back in 1936 — 74 years ago — boffins accepted that about 3.3Khz was the accepted frequency that telephone calls are going to run on and it's been like that, generally, ever since. Call quality is reasonable but leaves a lot to be desired. Think calls from Skype to Skype where quality is often crystal clear." It's crazy to me that (for people with decent mics at least) Ventrillo sounds better than corporate conference calls.

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No mitigations for click-and-get-hacked exploit

Researchers have uncovered sophisticated attack code circulating on the net that exploits a critical vulnerability in the most recent version of Adobe Reader.…

jsuda writes "You've got to have a lot of confidence and nerve to write and try to sell a nearly 400 page book on cooking to the take-out pizza and cola set. No cookbook is likely to turn many geeks into chefs or take them away from their computer screens. However, even though Cooking for Geeks contains a large number of recipes, it is not a conventional cookbook but a scientific explanation of the how and why of cooking which will certainly appeal to that group, as well as to cooking professionals and intellectually curious others." Read on for the rest of jsuda's review.

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Shares and $10m bonus topper upper in play

Mark Hurd will take a 25 per cent pay cut to work for Larry Ellison — if HP fails in its legal maneuver to block the Oracle CEO's audacious hire.…

Old devices need not apply

Apple has released iOS 4.1, which Steve Jobs outlined in his presentation one week ago, during which he also introduced Cupertino's new iPods, revamped Apple TV, and iTunes-based music sales social networking effort, Ping.…