Dvorak News Blog

Trailer Park 2.0: Cloud on Wheels!

By Eideard Friday November 28, 2008

The prospect of outsourcing servers and storage to the cloud has an irresistible lure of operational simplicity and cash efficiency for today’s application developers. Cloud computing vendors help operate social networking applications, micro-blogging sites, global gaming networks and a plethora of applications that we use everyday. Yet, as successful and economically desirable as clouds have been for many organizations, outsourcing servers and storage causes a serious emotional and operational dilemma for the hardened breed of systems administrators called server huggers.

Everyone working in and around the Internet knows a server hugger. Server huggers relish spending time in air-conditioned data centers, sitting on raised floors under florescent lighting with a laptop connected to a console port of a server (or, if they are lucky, standing against a server rack using a dedicated terminal and a slide-out keyboard tray). They spend hours staring at command-line on a terminal and at notebooks of commands, passwords and IP addresses…

Weightlifter

By hhopper Thursday November 27, 2008

8 Comments

Video and facepaint by hawhawjames.

NFL Game to be Shot Live in 3-D this Weekend

By hhopper Thursday November 27, 2008

15 Comments

Photo by 3ality digital

The Wall Street Journal

Next week, a game between the San Diego Chargers and the Oakland Raiders will be broadcast live in 3-D to theaters in Los Angeles, New York and Boston. It is a preliminary step on what is likely a long road to any regular 3-D broadcasts of football games.

The idea is a “proof of concept,” says Howard Katz, NFL senior vice president of broadcasting and media operations. “We want to demonstrate this and let people get excited about it and see what the future holds.”

The several hundred guests at the three participating theaters Dec. 4 will include representatives from the NFL’s broadcasting partners and from consumer-electronics companies. The event will be closed to the general public. Burbank, Calif.-based 3ality Digital LLC will shoot the game with special cameras and transmit it to a satellite. Thomson SA’s Technicolor Digital Cinema is providing the satellite services and digital downlink to each theater, and Real D 3D Inc. will power the display in the theaters.
[…]
Next week’s demonstration will also include television displays, to show what might one day be available in homes. While 3-D television sets are already available in stores, mainly for the handful of DVDs available in 3-D, the industry is still working on technical standards for 3-D.

That process raises the possibility that 3-D TV sets purchased today might not be compatible with programs aired in a few years’ time. Just as in theaters, home viewers must wear special 3-D glasses.

Nokia Ad — Bruce Lee Plays Ping-Pong with Nunchucks

By hhopper Thursday November 27, 2008

11 Comments

Ain’t CG great?

This Guy’s Accurate!

By hhopper Thursday November 27, 2008

16 Comments

Interesting Caricature of Obama by El Jueves Magazine

By McCullough Thursday November 27, 2008

14 Comments

“They watch the Pendulum and they repeat with me”

El Jueves– Aunque mucha gente lo vea como un peligroso comunista con cuernos y rabo, y además negro (no mucho, pero un poco negro); aunque muchos vean en él poco menos que la figura del Anticristo; en fin, aunque muchos crean que con él vendrá el fin del mundo, y no con el cambio climático, que eso del cambio climático sólo es un invento de izquierdistas y progres, lo cierto es que una amplia mayoría de este planeta ha sentido la victoria de Obama como un orgasmo, un pedazo de orgasmo.

Translation:

While many people see it as a dangerous communist with horns and tail, and also black (not much but a little black), although many see in it a little less than the figure of the Antichrist, anyway, though many believe he will come with the end of the world, not climate change, that climate change is only an invention of leftist and pro, the truth is that a vast majority of this planet has felt the victory of Obama as an orgasm, a piece of orgasm .

A little puzzling… I’m not sure whether this is pro Obama or not. The translation is from Google Translate.

Suspicious Google searches used against Florida Mom accused of murder

By McCullough Thursday November 27, 2008

56 Comments

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) – Someone performed Internet searches for “neck breaking” and “household weapons” on the home computer of a Florida mother charged with killing her missing 3-year-old daughter, according to court documents. The Orange County State Attorney’s office released almost 800 pages of discovery documents in the case of 22-year-old Casey Anthony, who has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and other charges in the June disappearance of her daughter Caylee.

In mid-March, someone used the Anthonys’ home laptop to search Google and Wikipedia for peroxide, shovels, acetone, alcohol and chloroform. Traces of chloroform, which is used to induce unconsciousness and also a component of human decomposition, were found in the trunk of Casey Anthony’s car during forensic testing, the documents say. Caylee has not been seen since June, but she wasn’t reported missing until a month later. The child’s grandmother first called authorities in July to say she hadn’t seen Caylee for a month and her daughter’s car smelled like death. Anthony told authorities she had left her daughter with a baby sitter in June and the two were gone when she returned from work. Documents traced the unsuccessful efforts of investigators to find the woman.

Anthony says she spent the next month trying to find her daughter and didn’t call authorities because she was scared. Investigators say they have poked several holes in her story.

NEVER sleep with a crane operator’s wife

By McCullough Thursday November 27, 2008

20 Comments

GM Asks U.S. FAA to Bar Public Tracking of Leased Corporate Jet

By hhopper Thursday November 27, 2008

28 Comments

Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) — General Motors Corp., criticized by U.S. lawmakers for its use of corporate jets, asked aviation regulators to block the public’s ability to track a plane it uses.

“We availed ourselves of the option as others do to have the aircraft removed” from a Federal Aviation Administration tracking service, a GM spokesman, Greg Martin, said yesterday in an interview. He declined to discuss why GM made the request.

Those slimy bastards.

Found by Mister Justin.

Latest Photos from Mumbai

By Eideard Thursday November 27, 2008

48 Comments

Sharda Janardhan Chitikar, left, grieves the death of her two children

Daylife/AP Photo by Gurinder Osan

As I would expect, Daylife is doing the best job of collecting news photographs from the terror underway in Mumbai.

Infant Formula Contaminated with Melamine. FDA and Makers Says It Is OK Anyway.

By John C Dvorak Thursday November 27, 2008

52 Comments

Calls for national infant formula recall spread | KOMO News – Seattle, Washington | National & World News — I love the way things have changed in this country. Blame the messenger. Since this contamination was an accident due to crappy manufacturing as opposed to the Chinese intentional use of melamine, then it is OK. Ha. Unbelievable.

Disclosure that laboratory tests have detected traces of contamination in several major brands of infant formula generated concern and confusion Wednesday, with a national consumer’s group and the Illinois attorney general demanding a Food and Drug Administration recall and the federal agency saying it had released inaccurate information on what chemicals were found in which top selling products.

As worried parents called manufacturers looking for guidance about the presence of melamine and a key byproduct in U.S.-made formula, the FDA reiterated its position that the baby food is safe and parents should continue feeding it to their babies, contending the extremely low levels of contamination do not present a health danger.

Also, a spokesman for one major manufacturer criticized the FDA for its release of the inaccurate information.

“We’re getting inundated by calls from moms confused about the situation,” said Pete Paradossi, a spokesman for Mead Johnson, one of the three major manufacturers of U.S.-made formula involved in the problem detections.

Melamine is the industrial chemical found in Chinese infant formula – in far larger concentrations – that has been blamed for killing at least three babies and making at least 50,000 others ill.

The FDA and other experts said the melamine contamination in U.S.-made formula had occurred during the manufacturing process, rather than intentionally as was done in Chinese production. The manufacturers insist their products are safe.

“The levels that we are detecting are extremely low,” said Dr. Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. “They should not be changing the diet. If they’ve been feeding a particular product, they should continue to feed that product. That’s in the best interest of the baby.”

Best interests of the baby? Man, these guys have a lot of chutzpah.

Found by Aric MAckey.

Build a Laser Beam Security System for about 20 Bucks

By McCullough Wednesday November 26, 2008

11 Comments

Don’t forget to put the cat in the closet for the night.

Terrorists kill dozens in coordinated attacks throughout Mumbai

By Eideard Wednesday November 26, 2008

44 Comments

More than 60 people have been killed in a series of attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai with two five-star hotels among the targets of gunmen armed with powerful assault rifles and grenades.

Maharashtra state police chief A.N. Roy told the NDTV channel that “unknown terrorists” had opened fire in “at least seven to eight places” across the city.

“Fifty-eight bodies have been brought in. There are another 50 who are injured, some critical, who have been transferred to the nearby J.J. Hospital,” a spokesman for the city’s St George’s Hospital told AFP by telephone.

Television reports put the death toll as high as 80, while the Press Trust of India said as many as 200 people had been injured.

At the time of posting, CNN is covering this as an ongoing attack – hostages held at two or more hotels – terrorist gangs hurling hand grenades from the roofs of the hotels.

The Mafia gun disguised as a mobile phone

By John C Dvorak Wednesday November 26, 2008

25 Comments

Dial M for murder: The Mafia gun disguised as a mobile phone | Mail Online — Cripes, what next?

As startled Italian police discovered, the device seized in a raid on a Mafia gang is actually a pistol.

The phone gun – complete with a dummy display – holds four .22 bullets.