Blackmoor Vituperative

This is a good open source story with a happy ending. I haven’t read something that made me feel this good in weeks.

The 160 first-year medical students at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Medicine used to receive a boatload of printed course materials during their first weeks in school%u2014four cases’ worth of paper per student, in fact.

Printing costs were sky-high. So it wasn’t surprising when state budgetary officers zeroed in on printed course materials as a prime opportunity to slash.

But with printed materials no longer available, pressure was mounting on the electronic version of course materials, available on the SOM’s intranet site. After pondering upgrading the course materials via a commercially available application, the SOM’s Office of Information Systems decided to go with an open version of course management software, implemented by Cignex, a systems integrator specializing in open source and based in Santa Clara, Calif. Cignex would prove critical in helping SOM select an open application that would prove a scalable platform for future growth.

read more…

(from eWeek, College Taps Open-Source App to Solve Costly Paper Chase)

The US Department of Defense (DoD) is creating the world’s largest storage network by combining a number of separate networks into a gigantic 17,000-port Meta SAN monster.

The Meta SAN will store many petabytes (millions of gigabytes) of both administrative and mission-critical command and control data, and be put together by Brocade and reVision, an IT consultancy.

The existing SANs have multi-vendor storage devices, and Meta SAN will use securely connected end-points, virtualisation technologies, and other techniques to tightly control access to each storage device and safeguard its highly sensitive data. Critical data is stored on high-performance storage devices, whereas less sensitive information is saved on cheaper arrays, cutting hardware costs across the DoD’s agencies.

(from US defense department builds world’s biggest SAN, Techworld)

I thought that this was really interesting:

Red Envelopes: An Insider’s View of IT in China

My apartment is a few blocks from a Costco discount warehouse store in Richmond. A friend of mine told me they have good prices on meat, and they also have good prices on gasoline (as much as five cents cheaper than the competition). But in order to shop at Costco, you have to buy a membership card. In the past two weeks I have visited Costco twice.

A week ago, I entered the store with the intention of looking around to see if I thought it was worth paying a membership fee to shop there. I wanted to check out the prices, the selection, and so forth. Upon entering the huge open doorway, a Costco employee stopped me and told me that looking around was not permitted, and that I had to go stand in line to get a temporary pass in order to come into the store. So I went over to the counter and stood in line. And stood. And stood. Ten minutes later I came to a realization:

I am standing in line to get into a store that I’m not even sure I want to shop at.

To hell with that. I left.

Today I returned to Costco, having decided that the price of their gas would, by itself, go a long way toward making a membership worthwhile (I drive back and forth between Richmond and Portsmouth at least once a week). I entered the store’s enormous door and walked past the long, long line of people waiting to leave (people are in line waiting to leave?) and approached the customer service counter to go ahead and get a membership.

“Sir! Sir!” called the long-haired man keeping people from leaving the store with their purchases.

“Yes?” I said.

“You need to go back out and come in the other door,” he said, gesturing toward the large doorway around fifty feet away, just like the one I had just walked through.

“Um… what? I’m here to buy a card — a membership,” I said, gesturing at the counter in front of me.

“You need to go back out and come in the other door,” he repeated.

Blink.

“Are you asking me to leave the store?” I asked, incredulous.

“Yes,” he said.

I am right in front of the customer service counter, I have told him that I am here to buy a membership, and he wants me to leave the store, walk sixty feet away outside, then come back in the store and walk forty feet back. I was speechless for a moment. Then I said a rude phrase to him that I have probably not said to another human being in twenty years, and I left.

I hear a lot about how evil Wal-Mart supposedly is. I do not see it. I get good prices on what I buy, the people who work there get paid better than they would at the mall, and I have never been treated rudely at Wal-Mart. No one at Wal-Mart has ever asked me to stand in line just to get in the store. No one at Wal-Mart has ever asked me to leave the store.

I have decided that since Costco clearly does not want my business, I will not trouble them further. There’s a Sam’s Club right across the street, and they have gas, too.

In the final step required to make the phase-out of analog TV broadcasts official, President Bush yesterday signed the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which contains legislation stating that on February 17, 2009, all TV broadcasters nationwide must switch off their analog broadcasts. After that date, televisions that rely solely on analog over-the-air television — typically delivered via rabbit-ear antennas — will go dark.

(from CNet, Bush signs DTV bill; analog cutoff February 17, 2009)

Federal judge Jose Lunardelli ruled late on Aug. 31 that Google be given 15 days to disclose the information, including the Internet Protocol addresses that can uniquely identify a specific computer on a network.

The judge set a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($23,255) for each individual case if Google refuses to reveal the data.

Brazilians account for 65 percent of Orkut’s nearly 27 million users and public prosecutors have recently been investigating Orkut communities set up by Brazilians and dedicated to such subjects as racism, homophobia and pedophilia.

Google officials in Brazil have said all clients’ data is stored on a server in the United States and is subject to U.S. laws, which makes it impossible for them to reveal the data in Brazil. They also said the local affiliate only deals in marketing and sales and has nothing to do with Orkut.

(eWeek, Judge Orders Google to Disclose Users’ Data)

It will be interesting to see how that works out.

I indulged my curiosity and Googled myself earlier this evening after watching a few episodes of The Venture Bros. I mostly found a bunch of web sites I created back when I did that for a living, posts to bulletin boards, and so forth. Boring. I did find one interesting thing. Robert J. Hansen’s Crypto FAQ quotes something I said a long while ago. Check it out.

I just saw a preview for Flyboys. I have to see this movie.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/mgm/flyboys/trailer/

ROSWELL, N.M. – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) special agents today arrested 15 illegal aliens who were working for a local company here that is under contract to paint U.S. military aircraft, including Lockheed C-130 military aircraft.

Some of the aliens were in the process of painting these aircraft when they were arrested.

[…]

The aliens were arrested after they were determined to be illegally residing and working in the United States. Those arrested are citizens of Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala.

“Aggressive worksite enforcement actions like this help deter aliens from entering the United States attracted by the ‘job magnet,'” said Troy Henley, special agent-in-charge of the ICE Office of Investigations in El Paso.

(from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE arrests 15 aliens in Roswell working for U.S. military contractor)