|
Alter |
Published: Fri Jul 30 09:55:31 2010 UTC.
 : Regular / Extended
|
|
Alter |
Published: Fri Jul 30 09:55:31 2010 UTC.
: Regular / Extended
|
|
|
|
1.000.000 to one - by Super_Ante (Score: 5, Funny) Thread |
|
It was predicted in Revelations… - by Ken Broadfoot (Score: 5, Funny) Thread 2182 - 2010 = 172 years Subtract 42 ( Life the universe and everything ) And you get 130 ( Hold this thought ) In 1951, Bobby Thomson hit the “Shot heard round the world” (i.e The Asteroid) Take 1951 and turn it into a repeating Decimal Then take the above 130 and divide by the repeating decimal and you get… 666 ! |
|
Let’s get crackin’ - by DWMorse (Score: 5, Funny) Thread |
|
Re:We don’t need to worry about it - by Cyberllama (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread I imagine some people have, or plan to have, children which they will have some degree of fondness towards. As it may effect their children, or their children’s children, it might be of some concern to you. Also, I’m pretty sure an unusually high percentage of Slashdot readers are not planning on dying. I mean, that’s pretty much what science is for, right? I’m very concerned about how this asteroid will affect my robot-body . . . |
|
Re:I’ll probably be dead by then, right? - by nacturation (Score: 5, Funny) Thread Not only you. The whole human species would be extinct by then. We have global warming, pollution, fuel shortage, wars, corruption. These are enough to finish us by 2100. What happens in 2182 is irrelevant. Dammit, and 2182 was finally going to be the year of Linux on the desktop! |
|
|
|
Pfff - by BitHive (Score: 5, Funny) Thread I bet if they deregulate they could get that down to just one ISP. |
|
Developing vs. Developed - by DigiShaman (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread How is this really news? At all levels, China’s GDP continues to grow while western nations stagnate or creep forward. China is developing while the west has already developed it products and service offerings. Eventually, they will reach a saturation point like the west and slow down. But get ready to accept them as the 1# economic super power when that happens. Simply put, they have far more human resources to tap into. The only thing holding them back right now is local politics. |
|
Re:Developing vs. Developed - by clarkkent09 (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread |
|
The view from the other side… - by thej1nx (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread Keep in mind that in already saturated markets, like Tania Harvey says, growth of the market becomes pretty slow. Almost everyone in Japan, for example, already uses internet on PC or their cellphones etc. The companies may get customers to switch between them, but finding new customers is much harder. Not to mention the “quality” of internet, one gets in China, what with half of it being blocked out/censored anyways. Long way to go before they catch up with the rest of the world. |
|
And they only get 20% of the internet? - by hawkeyeMI (Score: 5, Funny) Thread |
|
|
|
Re:Wow! - by TooMuchToDo (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread As for Tesla? Screw ‘em. We’re paying them (government subsidy??) to develop a car they will sell us back at a ridiculous price. It’s a loan you twat, not a subsidy http://www.google.com/search?q=doe+loans+electric+vehicles Hell, Nissan got $1.4 billion+, Fisker got around $500 million, GM got $14.4 billion and Chrysler got $8.5 billion. You know who has a solid, proven drivetrain and energy management system? Tesla. There should be some sort of test before you’re allowed to post here. |
|
16 whole miles on battery? wow. - by John Hasler (Score: 5, Funny) Thread If I put a couple of extra batteries in my old Chevy I think I could get that far on the starter. |
|
Re:Fitting since Porsche made the first hybrid - by netsavior (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread |
|
Deceiving. - by pwnies (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread “78 miles per gallon on the European cycle” Sure, and my plug in golf car gets mpg on any test thrown at it. Really that’s poor and deceitful advertising. This car is a plug in car - it doesn’t generate it’s own electricity. It’s not like a prius where you just fill it and forget about it, you’re supplying another form of energy yourself. Saying what MPG it gets is redundant unless you also show how many Joules of electricity it used in the process as well. |
|
SI units - by SensiMillia (Score: 5, Informative) Thread 78 miles per gallon is about 3 liter for 100 km. 198 miles = 319 kilometers |
|
|
|
Copyright is an arbitrary social convention - by metacell (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread Copyright is just an arbitrary social convention. Three hundred years ago, composers were happy when their music was used by others. Today, the staff at restaurants can’t sing the Happy Birthday song to their customers because it would constitute an unauthorised commercial use. Copyright was a legal construct the printers (not the writers!) lobbied for in order to increase their profits, and soon, people got used to it and started seeing it as a god-given right. Perhaps in the future it will be possible to copyright individual sentences, and speaking them without the permission of the originator will be seen as ”stealing”. Perhaps there will be moral outrage, like the one over piracy, when people insist on speaking any sentence they like without paying the appropriate fee. There are some morals which are very basic and vital to society, like the taboos against murder or theft, but copyright is not one of them. Copyright is a legal construct which gives priveleges to some (primarily large media corporations) at the expense of others (consumers). Copyright should be judged on how beneficial it is for society as a whole. It is an economic instrument meant to stimulate the production of literary and artistic works, not to ensure the income of writers and artists. |
|
Piracy squeezes the middle hardest - by LordZardoz (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread You cannot look at top grossing games (or movies or music) to get an idea of the economic impact of software piracy. You have to look at the not so successful games. The kinds of games that are going to have problems from piracy are the games that are good but not great. Think of any game that you do not ever see a commercial for on television. The impact of piracy on a high profile title is probably the difference between making 50 million dollars and 40 million dollars profit. Significant, but not really that damaging to the company that made that title. The impact of piracy on a low profile title is probably the difference between making a modest profit and having to shut down the studio that made it. An indie title is probably not going to be popular enough to attract that much piracy. END COMMUNICATION |
|
Re:Piracy squeezes the middle hardest - by Cruciform (Score: 5, Informative) Thread You’d be surprised. |
|
It’s not stealing. - by GNUALMAFUERTE (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread It’s not stealing, and it’s not Piracy. Stealing is taking a physical good, in a way that after I take it, I have it and you don’t. Piracy is robbing ships on the open seas. He is talking about Copyright Infringement, and since Copyright shouldn’t exist, it is ALWAYS ok to ‘infringe’ on his imaginary rights. |
|
Re:It’s not stealing. - by Goboxer (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread |
|
|
|
Well actually… - by Grimbleton (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread My system is AMD-based. I ALREADY feel the heat. |
|
You will be baked - by Megahard (Score: 4, Funny) Thread |
|
Re:You will be baked - by DarkKnightRadick (Score: 4, Funny) Thread The cake is a lie. |
|
For an even greater sensation… - by Just_Say_Duhhh (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread |
|
Re:Watch where you put that! - by d474 (Score: 5, Funny) Thread |
|
|
|
Stop your trolling folks, you’re overreacting - by Danious (Score: 5, Informative) Thread Oh for god sakes people. Kwin provides pluggable back ends for rendering engines for compositing. Currently we support xrender and OpenGL 1.1, soon we will support the next version of OpenGL. Big deal. You can turn compositing on or off, or choose which engine is best for your platform. We will not remove the old engines or force everyone to use compositing. So stop your trolling. |
|
Fix bugs and add non gui related features - by slaxative (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread |
|
Re:Someone please explain - by Anonymous Coward (Score: 5, Funny) Thread Aerated plastic tubs and earthworms. |
|
Re:bloat ware - by Erikderzweite (Score: 5, Informative) Thread Eye candy in Linux DEs can make work a good deal smoother — resources are better shared between CPU and GPU. Plus there are some very useful effects — expo and scale plugins (both in Kwin and compiz). Transparency can come handy too. Granted, desktop cube is there just for show as there are wobbly windows, fire or water effects. And advanced effects don’t really add that much to boot time — I still manage to stay within 30 seconds on a rather old hardware, even with P4-class PC. |
|
Re:And for those older machines? - by Windwraith (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread I can tell you that 4.5rc2 automagically loads up akonadi and all of its fluff/garbage/helpers if you have a clock plasmoid. Without option to turn it off. Rant mode ON: I don’t know who is to blame but whoever is responsible for this, is not helping the already damaged (by 4.0) reputation of KDE. Half-baked and/or mandatory apps are not helping. Neither does the silly “KDE SC” gimmick. I can only think something in the management chain is broken, leading to absurd/rushed/experimental decisions pulled off. Either that or the exceeding majority of the 6-month release cycles is translation/bugfixing. As new features talked about during the release of “KDE 4.X” are implemented in “KDE 4.X+1” in the same state shown during the 4.X release (Look at tiled windows in the 4.5 branch. It’s there, but…) Sorry, I really needed to put that up for discussion. Whenever Akonadi is mentioned I go berserk as I am reminded of stuff like it being a requisite for the standard clock. Well, at least the project is dynamic and a good fix/decision changes for better can happen eventually. |
|
|
|
Re:Why all the Perl-bashing? - by jjohnson (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread It’s not hip to bash Perl these days, it’s actually a sign of old-fogeyism. There’s a lot of pent-up irritation with Perl. It comes from the fact that a large number of us started with Perl, and watched it languish as competitors like PHP and Python and then Ruby ate its community. Then Perl 6 was announced, and Perl loyalism was given a shot in the arm—whee, Perl will evolve and take back its rightful place as king of scripting languages! Then it languished again for more than a decade while the famously squirrelly Larry Wall gave talks on religion and postmodernism in programming. Perl won’t die; Perl 6 will find a community. But Perl as king of scripting languages, as the indispensable tool in your toolbox, as the mark of the geek, is a dead letter now, and to anyone who invested a lot in mastering it, that stings a bit. |
|
Re:Why all the Perl-bashing? - by mystik (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread Perl did languish for a while. Perl6 gave the language dabblers an opportunity to experiment with new ideas and concepts. Take the best of perl5, but not be afraid to be wildly incompatible, and see where it goes. However, while all the cool kids were doing stuff in perl6, the perl5 folks realized they could do really cool things in perl5 too, right now. Perl5 now has Moose, Plack (Stolen from Ruby’s Rack), new web frameworks to match and even better those of ruby, python, and even PHP. Perl5’s maintainers started to actually chase down long standing bugs, and actually kill off the things that have been giving deprecation warnings in perl5. There’s even a Perl Foundation grant out for someone doing full-time perl5 bug triage + fixing. (And if you’ve seen Perl5’s source, you’ll know that’s no small feat) My company’s work in perl5 pays my bills. Perl5 is not going anywhere anytime soon, so I’m confident we can continue to move forward with it. Perl6, now that it’s becoming more and more usable will inspire the imagination of developers, and continue to evolve, and the perl5 folks will continue to cherry pick the nifty features they can backport into perl5. It’s a very exciting future for perl all around, and I’m happy to be on board. |
|
Huge! - by e2d2 (Score: 5, Funny) Thread This is going to be huge! Every application that comes out for the next 10 years will use this I predict. Just an FYI: I eat paint chips. |
|
Re:Does anyone care? - by chromatic (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
It’s flexible, powerful, and easy to extend. 84,296 modules are freely available from the CPAN (at least when I checked; the upload rate is staggering). It has an immense culture of quality and testing. It’s amazingly portable. It scales from the freshest novice writing baby Perl to large-scale applications which must not fail, written by experienced professionals. It’s malleable; you can program in a compiler-checked subset of the language or express yourself in the most clear or (if you don’t care about maintainability) the most expressive, creative way possible. It has amazing libraries for network access and databases. It sets the standard for text processing. It’s been an integral part of usable Unix installations for years. You can find it just about everywhere, and you can do just about anything with it. |
|
Re:Does anyone care? - by chromatic (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread Only Python comes close to having anything resembling Perl’s level of testing. (Ruby’s improved a lot thanks to Rubinius, but to my knowledge the latest stable releases don’t include test suites.) PHP’s testing was abysmal, last I checked. None of those languages have anything like the CPAN, despite saying for years “We should build something like the CPAN.” None of those languages are as malleable as Perl 5; see MooseX::Declare for example, or even Moose. PHP is still easier to deploy for web programs than Perl. Python has an advantage with GAE, and I understand Ruby has something called Heroku.
Healthy communities flourish from the healthy interactions between and cooperation of many individuals. If you thought Larry’s job was to make sure that everyone is happy and doing exactly what he thinks they should do, you’ve never understood Larry or the Perl community. |
|
|
|
why this happens - by Nadaka (Score: 5, Informative) Thread The big reason for internal IT departments to charge other departments for services rendered is this: When it comes time for a manager to “earn” his bonus, the first thing he looks at is cutting the budget for less profitable departments. The IT department rarely has external clients for income, but is absolutely vital to keeping the business running. Therefore to keep some short sighted pencil pusher from crippling the company with a failing infrastructure, the IT department has to show a “profit” for the services it renders. |
|
This may merely be an allocation scheme - by neltana (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread What you may be seeing, especially if you are working for a very large company, could just be a cost allocation scheme, not a real money cost as you are thinking of it. If your department brings in revenue, the organization needs to match expenses to it for purposes of Management Accounting. For instance, imagine you know it costs $X to run one of your cost centers. That dollar amount includes everything from the manpower, the equipment, the facility…everything. Now, they need to assign these costs to the departments that actually make money in a way that makes sense. They could do this by carefully costing out each service they provide and assigning an overhead rate, blah blah. That tends to be a pain. You do it if you have to…but you try not to have to. Another, easier, way of doing it is determining a usage metric (CPU hours, GB of storage, number of tickets) and using that to determine each profit center’s percentage allocation of the overall cost. So, the $60 per GB may not even be close to a market rate for storage. However, if all the departments used twice as much storage next year, the per GB cost might fall to $31 per GB (slightly more than half to account for the fact that there would obviously be more real costs). Conversely, if you convinced your management to contract externally for storage, everyone else might find their per GB cost rise, since the fixed costs would be static. |
|
Re:Here is 67 Terabytes for $7867 - by zonky (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread |
|
Re:Here is 67 Terabytes for $7867 - by Eristone (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread Also doesn’t allocate anything for the cost of the person doing the maintenance/monitoring - that person doesn’t come for free usually. |
|
Cost Drivers - by MyLongNickName (Score: 5, Informative) Thread Hi, I am willing to bet that the “gigabyte” usage is simply a cost driver. Accounting simply needs to know how to divide up IT costs and settled on this as a cost driver, possibly one of many, to determine what it takes to support each department. This is neither new nor entirely bad. Sometimes it is better to go with an easy-to-implement, but only partially accurate number than one that is perfectly accurate but impossible to implement. |
|
|
|
e-book != Kindle - by gambit3 (Score: 5, Informative) Thread This bothers me in slashdot, of all places. Articles that reference Amazon e-books ONLY COUNT THE NUMBER SOLD ON AMAZON. NOT ALL E-BOOKS! There are plenty other e-book and physical book sellers out there that are NOT amazon. It doesn’t emcompass the whole literary universe, so it shouldn’t be written as such. |
|
Re:It took this long? - by Darkness404 (Score: 4, Insightful) Thread |
|
Re:No “ideologies” to hold him back - by SatanicPuppy (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread Wow, that’s pretty ignorant. Most times the authors are against it because the publishing houses offer them a tiny flat fee and no percentage of the sales…As far as THEY are concerned, it’s just one printing! And the author gets crap, which is wildly unfair given that the costs to the publishing house are non-existent. In this case, since he’s dead, there is no one to stop the publishing houses from raping his corpse. |
|
“Men Who Hate Women” - by johndiii (Score: 5, Informative) Thread The original title of the first book is a bit more descriptive, but probably had to be sanitized for the US market. If you can, see the Swedish movie made from that book. It is very well done. Be warned, though - it is as brutal as the book. I don’t have much hope for the Hollywood movie. Probably turn Blomkvist into some kind of James Bond figure. It’s too bad that Larsson is not alive to see this. His success is well-deserved. |
|
The title of his books - by Tumbleweed (Score: 5, Informative) Thread The title of his books remind me of Two of those titles aren’t his original titles. The first one was originally titled, “Men Who Hate Women.” The title was so important to Larsson that he had a bit of a battle on his hands to keep it called that. It’s a great description of the underlying purpose of the books, and kind of sad that it got changed. The third was originally called, “The Air Castle That Exploded”. I’m glad that one got changed. I _do_ think it was a good marketing strategy to rename them with a common naming scheme, and probably helped bring the books to the attention of more people, which is good. I think once David Fincher’s English-language movies come out, the books will experience another rennaisance of popularity. I’ve read all three and seen all three Swedish movies, and while the first two are quite good and remain pretty faithful to the parts of the books they cover, the third had some serious issues, I thought. The books are quite a bit better than the movies could be because of the nature of Lisbeth (the Girl) is so introverted that you only know what’s going on in her head; you can’t tell much of anything by just watching her do things in the movies. Also, the books are quite large, so by necessity, they had to cut major parts of the story out. Yes, they’re huge books. Read them, anyway. |
|
|
|
Re:Text only? - by Mr.Radar (Score: 4, Informative) Thread |
|
$20 for 8 bits?!?! - by Ossifer (Score: 5, Funny) Thread That’s $2.50 per bit! Outrageous! |
|
Re:$20 for 8 bits?!?! - by CannonballHead (Score: 5, Funny) Thread |
|
Re:Nice, but… - by gorzek (Score: 5, Informative) Thread You might want to check out the statistics as related by the company making these devices. The developing world has a glut of TVs but very few computers and little Internet access. These devices can help fill that gap. |
|
Re:Blurry text - by CohibaVancouver (Score: 5, Informative) Thread so presumably they’ll be trying to read masses of blurry text on an older SDTV.
Until the “IBM PC” came along, most of us hooked our home computers to our televisions: |
|
|
|
USB High Speed vs Full speed all over again. - by EMR (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread It’s a good idea to learn from the mistakes of others who like adding confusing naming. |
|
Re:And what will future versions be called? - by Nkwe (Score: 5, Funny) Thread In a few years presumably some even higher bandwidth specification will come along - no problem if they used version-numbers, but once you have labelled the first generation “standard” and the current generation “High Speed” what’re you going to be left with to use next and not end up looking stupid? “new higher speed”, “max speed”, “ultimate speed”, “super more ultimate than ultimate speed”, “I Can’t believe its not high speed… speed”? Ludicrous Speed |
|
Closed captions, hello? - by awtbfb (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread |
|
Good idea with poor execution. - by Andy Dodd (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread The five grades listed make sense. Standard Speed and High Speed with and without Ethernet (total of 4 combos of those two) and the Automotive cable. However the other stuff is poorly executed, like the “4K” rule. And do they have any rules on putting arbitrary meaningless bandwidth numbers on their cables like the example in the article and Monster? Any number that exceeds the bandwidth actually used by HDMI is meaningless, but manufacturers still stick crazy numbers on their cables anyway. Manufacturers should be permitted: They should NOT be permitted: |
|
There are differences in cables - by elrous0 (Score: 5, Informative) Thread |
|
|
|
Re:Useful for stationkeeping? - by gstoddart (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
What, exactly, do you mean by a ‘real spacecraft’. IKAROS is real. It’s in space. It’s actually using this. Have I missed something? From what I can tell, this is about as real as you can get. |
|
Re:Color me impressed - by JustOK (Score: 5, Funny) Thread just some light torque, i would think. |
|
Crookes Radiometer is NOT turned by light pressure - by Bruce Perens (Score: 5, Informative) Thread Crookes believed that his radiometer was turned by light pressure, but he was wrong! It’s actually a phenomenon of low-pressure gas moving around a temperature differential. If you pump your radiometer down to a really good vaccumm, it stops working! The light pressure is not sufficient to conquer the bearing friction. There’s a good explanation in Wikipedia. |
|
Re:Attitude Control - by Abstrackt (Score: 5, Funny) Thread |
|
Re:I have a CRT - by Chris Burke (Score: 5, Funny) Thread Hello, this is Captain Jean Luc Picard. On the bridge of the Enterprise, I have no problems with Number One. Number two is a different matter. That’s why I use Star Fleet brand enemas. With a Star Fleet Enema, I can boldy go like no one has gone before! |
|
|
|
The Nature of Science - by Stormy Dragon (Score: 2) Thread |
|
“Global warming” is not the issue - by Hausenwulf (Score: 2, Insightful) Thread The real issue is not global warming. The real issue is population. No matter what you do to control “global warming,” it’s pointless without measures to control population, and if history is any indication, if we don’t control it ourselves, mother nature will gladly step in to take a hand. |
|
Question from a heretic: So what? - by Caerdwyn (Score: 4, Insightful) Thread Let’s assume for a moment that the world is 1/5 of a degree warmer than it was a few decades ago, and that this is causing glacial melt. Here’s my question to you all: So what? Climate is not a constant. Never has been, never will be, and the variation has been a whole lot more than 1/5 of a degree. CO2 levels and global average temperatures have been higher and lower at many points in history, and we didn’t magically turn into Venus or Mars. There have been times when the icecaps disappeared, and life somehow went on. Sea levels have varied by hundreds of feet, without Americans to blame for, well, everything. There have also been ice ages, and somehow the world didn’t end. So what? There will be winners as well as losers. Canadians and Russians should be happy, as this will result in much longer growing seasons and more arable lands for them. They will be the breadbaskets of the world. And if this doesn’t happen, if we decide that the current climate is decreed to never be allowed to change again, will there be a demand for subsidies for what “might have been”? Lack-of-CO2 credits? So here’s a question. If civilization had arisen 10,000 years earlier, and someone observed how quickly the ice sheets were retreating, would there be a clamor to protect the glaciers that blanketed pretty much everything north of 50 degrees latitude? Would THAT climate change be seen as the Armageddon that the proposed climate change is being presented as? Would rising sea levels lead to a frothing panic about the loss of the Bering land bridge? So once again, I ask: If the climate is changing, so what? Climate is not a constant, things aren’t automatically evil just because it’s a human doing it, and I fail to see how this is any different from any other climate change in the four billion year history of everything on Earth. Mod this down because I don’t agree with you. It’s the Slashdot definition of “fair”. I just hope none of you are ever on a jury with the opportunity to destroy someone’s life if you don’t like their politics or religion or hairstyle or something. |
|
Does it matter? - by Bill_the_Engineer (Score: 3, Insightful) Thread Personally I think arguing over global climate change is a red herring. Do we really need an excuse to advocate “green” technologies? Shouldn’t the fact that we would have cleaner air (eg. less smog), and cleaner water (eg. less spills) be enough? The fact that industry is willing to pollute the air, water, and land to save a buck and use the threat of job losses to keep the populace from demanding stricter environmental regulations should be a huge clue on why we are even having this global climate change debate. It keeps us busy, and as long as we are busy trying to define what global climate change is, we are distracted from the real meat of the argument which is why are we living in this pollution now? I’m not a registered tree hugger, but even I question why our energy and environmental policies hasn’t evolved with the rest of our technological achievements. It becomes more evident by the day that we are keeping a very old and harmful power, industrial, and transportation system just to keep the current revenue generators fat and happy. |
|
If India and China Aren’t on Board… - by Petersko (Score: 3, Interesting) Thread |
|
|
|
Android needs a sandbox. - by yog (Score: 5, Informative) Thread |
|
I was going to troll, but… - by Xaedalus (Score: 4, Insightful) Thread When I read TFA, I saw the part where 47% of Droid apps use third party coding, and 23% of Apple apps also use it. Then I realized, there’s no safe place to hide. I like my walled garden, but even that has leaks. |
|
Re:Developers Bitch - by -kyz (Score: 5, Informative) Thread Apple is doing an equally bad job of protecting its ecosystem. There have been several customer-data-grabbing iPhone apps, and these have only been yanked after members of the public alerted Apple to them. Pinchmedia: http://i-phone-home.blogspot.com/2009/07/pinchmedia-anatomy-of-spyware-vendor.html Storm8: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/ybenjamin/detail??blogid=150&entry_id=51077 MogoRoad: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/30/iphone_security/ Smuggling tethering past the censors: http://top10.com/mobilephones/news/2010/07/app_smuggles_tethering_onto_iphone/ Apple don’t look at the source code of apps, they just test the binary and scan it for badness. Provided the binary encrypts its strings, and does nothing dodgy during the short testing window (less than two weeks), Apple approve it. Apple’s custodianship doesn’t protect you from determined data thieves, only the incompetent ones. Android market, while just as bad as Apple, at least gives you the opportunity to decide if you want an app based on what permissions it demands. If it demands too much, you reject it. Once you give it the “OK”, it can’t turn around and demand more. I’d prefer that Apple added that (telling you what permissions the code has, not letting it have more), even if they keep their approval process. |
|
Re:Developers Bitch - by diamondsw (Score: 4, Insightful) Thread Such reporting wasn’t disallowed until very recently. There was a very good reason for it as well - developers then got that data back so they could tell how many people were still on old OS versions, what the uptake was on a new OS, and could plan their features and releases accordingly. The only reason Apple got upset is it revealed prototype OS versions in their lab as a side effect. |
|
People will click through anything - by Coopjust (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread |
|
|
|
Re:Well, thanks goodness… - by Beardo the Bearded (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread Life isn’t like 24, Law and Order, or Hackers. First, in order to put someone in jail, you have to be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they did, in fact, commit the crime. That means you have to have evidence that they actually did the crime, that the don’t have an alibi, and have all the evidence admissible in court. “But my computer was compromised too!” would be a decent defence. How can you get around this? You’d have to track the commands for the botnet and trace each one back to a physical location. You’d then have to prove that whats-his-name was actually at that location at each of those times. Did he use an unsecured wifi hotspot all the time? Did he use his home address? Work? Is there a pattern that points to one individual or group of individuals? “I don’t computer much.” So now you have to prove that he’s got the skills to actually work the botnet himself, or have the case tossed out or not get to conviction. You’d have to watch the guy actually working. Is he a computer programmer at his day job? Does he have a degree in CS? It takes a long time to build a solid case. How long did it take for the Unibomber to get to trial? The FBI searched his 10 x 10 shack for six months. What about Robert Pickton? They’re still looking through his farm. Things don’t get solved in 30 minutes with a pretty bow. |
|
And in related news … - by powerlord (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
In related news, a grass roots campaign has started on the net calling for his release. Current estimates are that anywhere from 8 to 12 million people around the world are current calling for his release, writing petitions to their local government, and spamming on-line petition sites hoping to bring attention to this issue. |
|
Re:Jail time - by Mongoose Disciple (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread It’s our odd modern sense of justice. We don’t consider incarceration to be an effective deterrent or just punishment, but throw in a little jailhouse rape and suddenly everyone’s appropriately scared or satisfied. People are strange. |
|
Re:Two years? - by mandelbr0t (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread It took two years and a task force of how many, costing how much, to bring down three people? Much less than it would have cost to let them run amok. That sure says a lot about the state of network security, and law enforcement’s ineptitude for technology. While it says a lot about the state of network security, the fact that 8 to 12 million people were infected with a virus they didn’t know about says more about the computer literacy of the average individual. And, despite the fact that the botnet was millions of machines large, providing nearly impenetrable anonymity, law enforcement was still able to find the people behind the whole thing. That is actually one of the rare cases where law enforcement has proven they are not technically inept. Maybe this is a sign of better things to come. Don’t get me wrong. I share your cynicism in general about the state of the Internet and all of the security holes you could pilot a starship through, but I don’t think that mocking law enforcement when they actually catch somebody is the way to go. The people behind this botnet were responsible for creating international tensions that could have led to violence. They stole credit cards and banking information with no care for who they were harming, all to fuel their own egotistical ambitions. These were not good people, or hacker heroes, or anything of the sort. Sorry, but I’m siding with the FBI on this one. |
|
Re:Two years? - by derrickh (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread You’re an idiot. D |
|
|
|
Questions questions questions - by teebob21 (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread For the sake of discussion, let’s assume this report showed a problem orders of magnitude worse, and we were on the verge of Kessler syndrome conditions. What technologies exist today to combat the problem? (Yes, I know, no government today would unilaterally scrub space without a quid pro quo…) If there are 19,000 trackable chunks of debris, how many untrackable (and just as deadly) small particles are there? I know that particle densities are minute. If we launched an array of satellites with Aerogel paneling, is it reasonable to expect a significant improvement in “air” quality up there? What about that heat-ray device recently pulled our of Afghanistan? Can we launch one of those to spray microwaves tangentially to the Earth’s surface? Would the heat applied to a paint-chip sized debris particle be enough to change the orbit? It doesn’t take too much delta-v to alter the eccentricity of a paint fleck enough to burn up in orbit, does it? (Less coffee, more sleep next time, methinks) |
|
Short answers, more like guidelines - by starglider29a (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread
Solve the “how do you apply force at a distance” issue and yer halfway there. |
|
Re:Questions questions questions - by MozeeToby (Score: 5, Informative) Thread A ground based laser broom with adaptive optics is probably the only remotely cost effective way of mitigating the problem. From the ground you can’t easily reduce an objects velocity but you can push it into a more elliptical orbit, if you can get it elliptical enough you put the perigee inside Earth’s atmosphere and let that do the rest. It’s the only way I’ve heard about that doesn’t involve a ludicrous number of launches but at the same time will work only for relatively small pieces of debris in low orbit. Luckily, that’s where the majority of the problem lies so it might be effective enough until we can deal with the rest. |
|
Re:Time to develop.. - by mcgrew (Score: 5, Funny) Thread Yeah, well while you’re developing presently impossible Star Trek gadgets like a tractor beam, why not just develop a matter transporter and beam the shit down, Scotty? |
|
Re:Time to develop.. - by Flea of Pain (Score: 5, Funny) Thread Most of this stuff is metallic right? Possibly even magnetic? Methinks we need a Wile E. Coyote style ACME space-junk removing magnet! As an added benefit, it may trap fast moving birds in its steady stream of space debris! |
|
|
|
Do Something About It - by MrTripps (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread |
|
FUD - by cosm (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread In the post 9/11 world, the National Security Letter is an indispensable tool and building block of an investigation that contributes significantly to the FBI’s ability to carry out its national security responsibilities by directly supporting the furtherance of the counterterrorism, counterintelligence and intelligence missions. Don’t you just love that “In the post 9/11 world” bit? They use that qualifier for everything that infringes on privacy. Its the “Think of the children” of the Military Industrial Complex. Yes there are bad people. Yes there are folks that want to do bad things. But again, trading privacy, and hence freedom, for security, well you know the rest. |
|
Musing about encryption and privacy rights - by presidenteloco (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread Here are some awkward related questions: 1. What do you think the US government’s encryption-breaking capability REALLY is these days? e.g. for example, 2. Do security agencies of the federal government automatically flag for further investigation all people who use “an excess 3. Does the FBI, a “domestic” intelligence agency, have the right to spy on foreign residents whose net transactions |
|
It’s ok. This is government… - by John Hasler (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread …not vile corporations. They have your best interests at heart. The infallible, incorruptible regulators must have information to do their job of protecting you from the evil businessmen (and, of course, from yourself). Just cooperate and no one will get hurt. |
|
I’m all for catching the bad guys… - by realsilly (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread … but this, along with a lot of changes made with the last few adminstrations is getting ridiculous. Why must those of us who are law abiding put up with our civil liberties being stripped away piece by layered piece until we are truly in Orwell’s “1984”. I know that the reason that is being touted is to help the FBI and other agencies catch those would mean to cause harm upon us, but this is not the right way to go about this. To counter the arguement “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to hide”, I have done nothing wrong and I simply would like to continue to have my privacy that is part of my civil liberties. Just because someone does no wrong doesn’t mean they wish to be an open book. I prefer my habits via driving, phoning, texting, or web surfing to be my business, not yours or anyone else’s. |
|
|
|
You Betcha! - by assertation (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread I see articles everyday that satisfaction is low among Facebook users. They are hanging around, in part, because there aren’t any worthy alternatives from their perspective. Once Diaspora is out, I’m getting a few good friends to sign up with me, then I’m deleting my Facebook account. If Facebook pulls another “We did this, we didn’t tell you, we don’t care and you’ll like it” stunt after that point, many other Facebook users will dump them too. |
|
Render Facebook Obsolete? - by damn_registrars (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread |
|
Something will topple Facebook… - by Fortunato_NC (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread It might be open source, or it might not be, but eventually, someone will come along with a “better Facebook than Facebook”, and it will slowly die. That’s just creative destruction at work. It ALWAYS happens. Facebook was a better MySpace than MySpace. Google was a better Altavista than Altavista. Something newer and better is going to come along. People talk about Facebook and the network effect “locking in” people, but creative destruction is even more powerful than the network effect. |
|
Technology isn’t Facebook’s value per se - by MikeRT (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread Facebook provides a few things, in no small part because of its sheer size: 1) Ability to find most of the people you know easily. The open source hurdles are really: 1) Discovering users. Those are big hurdles, especially the ability (or perception of being able) to accurately discover other users one knows. Most of us here know that there is no guarantee that someone who claims to be a particular identity on Facebook isn’t Chester the Molester, an enemy masquerading as a friend who didn’t have an account before, etc. However, Facebook is perceived as safe by a lot of people, and an open environment would be perceived of in quite different terms. |
|
Farmville! - by AntEater (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread Unless they can get Farmville ported to an open platform most facebook users will never leave no matter hope open or technically superior an alternative is. |
|
Signal to Noise ratio over time
|
1-in-1,000 Chance of Asteroid Impact In
2 Chinese ISPs Serve 20% of World Broadband Users - by 
World’s Fastest Hybrid OK’d For Production - by 
Sometimes It’s OK To Steal My Games - by 
Thermoelectrics Could Let You Feel the Heat In Games - by 
KDE SC 4.7 May Use OpenGL 3 For Compositing - by 
Perl 6, Early, With Rakudo Star - by 
Internal Costs Per Gigabyte — What Do You Pay? - by 
Stieg Larsson Is First Author To Sell 1M E-Books - by 
A $20 8-Bit Wikipedia Reader For Your TV - by 
HDMI Labeling Requirements Promise a Stew of Confusion - by 
LCD ‘Engine’ For Spacecraft Attitude Control - by 
Global Warming ‘Undeniable,’ Report Says - by 
Android Data Stealing App Downloaded By Millions - by 
Suspected Mariposa Botnet Creator Arrested - by 
NASA’s Top 10 Space Junk Missions - by 
FBI May Get Easier Access To Internet Activity - by 
Could Open Source Render Facebook the Next AOL? - by 
