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Comment Re:oookay. (Score 3, Insightful) 47

by Azar (#26673153) Attached to: Lucene and SOLR Get Commercial Support

"...in the hopes of making it the defacto choice of search technologies used by companies within their products. 'The Lucene search library ranks amongst the top 5 Apache projects... According to Lucid Imagination officials, the Solr search server, which transforms the Lucene search library into a ready-to-use search platform for building applications...

I agree, it could have been more explicit in giving a brief description, but was it really that difficult to glean what it does from the summary?

Comment Re:Short lifespan? I don't think so. (Score 1) 249

by Azar (#25981141) Attached to: Real-World Benchmarks of Ext4

Is there some reason the version under Linux would be so comparatively fragile?

My understanding is that Silicon Graphics (now SGI) wrote XFS specifically for their hardware which was designed to handle power failures, and would maintain enough power to finish it's current I/O operations. Since almost none (if any) x86 hardware has this built-in feature, XFS isn't as robust as it was on native SGI hardware. I can't find the references for this tibit, though. So take it with a grain of salt. It's just what I remember being told when XFS was first appearing on the Linux scene.

Although, some of the issues that people see on XFS may be due to modified files that haven't been flushed to disk before the system loses power. XFS intentially zeros any unwritten data blocks to avoid possible security issues arising from residual data [1]. I believe XFS also uses out-of-order writes for both meta-data and data so a loss of power could mangle some data.

There are a couple of slightly older, but still well-written, roundups about file system comparions. One here and one here.
Security

Submission + - Unisys investigated for covering up cyberattacks

Submitted by Stony Stevenson
Stony Stevenson writes: Unisys, a major government IT contractor, reportedly is being investigated for allegedly failing to detect cyberattacks, and then covering up its failings. Two US congressmen have called for an investigation into cyberattacks aimed at the Department of Homeland Security, along with a contractor charged with securing those networks.

In the letter they say the House Committee on Homeland Security's investigations led them to believe the department is under attack by foreign powers, and could be at risk because of "incompetent and possibly illegal activity" by a U.S. contractor. The congressmen didn't name the contractor in the letter. However, the Washington Post on Monday reported that the FBI is investigating Unisys, a major information technology firm with a US$1.7 billion Department of Homeland Security contract, for allegedly failing to detect cyber break-ins traced to a Chinese-language Web site and then trying to cover up its deficiencies.
Privacy

Submission + - US Feds expose thousands of SSNs

Submitted by msblack
msblack writes: The New York Times is reporting that an Office of Management and Budget exposed over 30,000 SSNs on its website which now notes that information has been removed. As many as 100,000 to 150,000 individuals may have been affected. Taxpayer cost for notifications and credit monitoring is $4 million.
Privacy

Submission + - Airships to patrol Venezuela's skies

Submitted by
bprime
bprime writes: "The BBC reports that officials in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, have bought three airship UAVs to keep tabs on the local populace. FTA: "The 15 metre (49 foot) long air ships are emblazoned with government slogans. Written in bright red are the words, 'We watch over you for your security'." They're not exactly black helicopters, but how long do you think until we see similar measures in high-crime American cities?"
PHP

Submission + - March is the Month of PHP bugs

Submitted by
PHP
PHP writes: "Stefan Esser is the founder of both the Hardened-PHP Project and the PHP Security Response Team (which he recently left). During an interview with SecurityFocus he announced the upcoming "Month of PHP bugs" initiative: "We will disclose different types of bugs, mainly buffer overflows or double free(/destruction) vulnerabilities, some only local, but some remotely trigger-able (for example, because they are in functions usually exposed to user input). Additionally there are some trivial bypass vulnerabilities in PHP's own protection features. [...] As a vulnerability reporter you feel kinda puzzled how people among the PHP Security Response Team can claim in public that they do not know about any security vulnerability in PHP, when you disclosed about 20 holes to them in the two weeks before. At this point you stop bothering whether anyone considers the disclosure of unreported vulnerabilities unethical. Additionally a few of the reported bugs have been known for years among the PHP developers and will most probably never be fixed. In total we have more than 31 bugs to disclose, and therefore there will be days when more than one vulnerability will be disclosed. The Month of PHP bugs will take place in March 2007.""

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