Comment smbc (Score 1) 316
Reminds me of this short
Comment Re:Regret is a standard term in economics (Score 0) 145
Right, economics lives in a world of games with artificial rules. Great for finding a strategy for a game with two colors of counters moving from column to column. Applying it to anything resembling real life is negligent at best.
Comment Re:1st and I hope last time on gizmodo (Score 1) 203
I think gp is refering to the nasa pix. A lot of the cloud formations in those pictures look doubled up.
100% Libre, Trisquel 4.5 STS 'Slaine' Released 207
Aldenissin writes "Trisquel 4.5 Slaine comes with a new boot manager for the live images, an improved installer which showcases the project highlights, and new programs like the Remmina remote desktop client, the social network client Gwibber or the backup tool Deja-dup. The web browser received several changes to improve attributes like speed by enabling http pipelining and other methods, privacy with blocking third party cookies and moving to Duck Duck Go search engine — both as default, and usability with the preinstalled FlashVideoReplacer plugin that allows watching videos from YouTube, Vimeo and many others. The main packages include: Linux-libre 2.6.35, Xorg 7.5, GNOME 2.32, Mozilla based web browser 3.6.15 and OpenOffice.org 3.2. Slaine is based on Ubuntu 10.10, and as always with Trisquel, it contains just free software. Available are 32 and 64 bit flavors, and being an STS release it will be supported for a year. This release will be the "live" operating system included in the Free Software Foundation member cards from now on, in replacement of Trisquel 4.0."
The Ambiguity of "Open" and VP8 Vs. H.264 493
An anonymous reader writes "With all the talk about WebM and H.264, how the move might be a step backwards for openness, and Google's intention to add 'plugins' for IE9 and Safari to support WebM, this article attempts to clear misconceptions about the VP8 and H.264 codecs and how browsers render video. Firefox, Opera and Google rely on their own media frameworks to decode video, whereas IE9 and Safari will hand over video processing to the operating system (Windows Media Player or QuickTime), the need for the web to establish a baseline codec for encoding videos, and how the Flash player is proprietary, but implementation and usage remain royalty free."
People With University Degree Fear Death Less 473
An anonymous reader writes "People with a university degree fear death less than those at a lower literacy level. In addition, fear of death is more common among women than men, which affects their children's perception of death."
Hacked iRobot Uses XBox Kinect To See World 124
kkleiner writes "A student at MIT's Personal Robotics Group is going to put Microsoft's Kinect to a good use: controlling robots. Philipp Robbel has hacked together the Kinect 3D sensor with an iRobot Create platform and assembled a battery-powered bot that can see its environment and obey your gestured commands. Tentatively named KinectBot, Robbel's creation can generate some beautifully detailed 3D maps of its surroundings and wirelessly send them to a host computer. KinectBot can also detect nearby humans and track their movements to understand where they want it to go."
In related but less agreeable news, "Dennis Durkin, who is both COO and CFO for Microsoft's Xbox group, told investors this week that Kinect can also be used by advertisers to see how many people are in a room when an ad is on screen, and to custom-tailor content based on the people it recognizes."
Modeling Software Showed BP Cement As Unstable 160
DMandPenfold writes "Advanced modeling software analyzed the cementing conditions for BP's Deepwater Horizon oil well as unstable, days before the blast that killed 11 oil rig workers and let millions of barrels of oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico. Halliburton, the company that carried out the cement job, used its own modeling software called OptiCem, to support arguments that more stability was needed for the piping and cement. ... An OptiCem test on 15 April, five days before the blast, stipulated that from Halliburton’s point of view, 21 ‘centralizers’ needed to be added to the well bore. The centralizers are used to provide space around the oil pipe casing within the well, as cement is poured around it, and are a vital part of safe drilling. BP initially adhered to the OptiCem software test and ordered 15 extra centralizers. But when technicians on the rig received the extra centralizers they mistakenly decided the new centralizers were the incorrect type. At this point BP proceeded with the drilling anyway, with the six centralizers, deciding another known technique of injecting cement in other places would work."
AMD Demos Llano Fusion APU, Radeon 6800 Series 116
MojoKid writes "At a press event for the impending launch of AMD's new Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 series graphics cards, the company took the opportunity to provide an early look at the first, fully functional samples of their upcoming 'Llano' processor, or APU (Applications Processer Unit). For those unfamiliar with Llano, it's 32nm 'Fusion' product that integrates CPU, GPU, and Northbridge functions on a single die. The chip is a low-power derivative of the company's current Phenom II architecture fused with a GPU that will target a wide range of operating environments at speeds of 3GHz or higher. Test systems showed the integrated GPU had no trouble running Alien vs. Predator at a moderate resolution with DirectX 11 features enabled. In terms of the Radeon 6800 series, board shots have been unveiled today, as well as scenes from AMD's upcoming tech demo, Mecha Warrior, showcasing the new graphics technology and advanced effects from the open source Bullet Physics library."
Comment xkcd (Score 1, Funny) 118
obligatory xkcd
Submission + - reCAPTCHA.net has been officially solved. (n3on.org)
n3ond4x writes: reCAPTCHA.net algorithms have been developed to solve the current CAPTCHA at an efficacy of 30%. The algorithms were disclosed at DEFCON 18 over the weekend and have since been made available online. Also available is a video demonstration of random reCAPTCHA.net CAPTCHAs being subjected to the algorithms.
Comment Re:Analog special effects are cool, but... (Score 1) 196
You might be surprised how many mundane scenes are actually CGI:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clnozSXyF4k
Comment Re:Wait. (Score 1) 155
According to TFA, it is already used in Ethiopia to denote sarcasm, and can be distinguished from the Spanish usage of the same character by its location at the end of a sentence rather than the beginning.
Droid X Gets Rooted 97
An anonymous reader writes "The Droid X forums have posted a procedure to root the new Motorola Droid X, putting to rest Andoid fans' fears that they would never gain access to the device's secrets due to a reported eFuse that would brick the phone if certain boot files were tampered with. Rooting the phone is the first step in gaining complete control over the device."
Comment Re:Who doesn't hash/encrypt passwords? (Score 1) 304
AppConstants.AUTH_KEY ? A salt that is Constant through out the App? That is not the same thing as a Random salt for every User.
The whole point of not storing plain text passwords is if somebody gets access to your DB. And in that case the only advantage of using one salt through out is that the attacker can't use a precomputed rainbow table for your hash function with out a salt. Instead they will have to compute ONE rainbow table for the one salt you used. When many salts are used rainbow tables are no longer useful. Just like GP said, two users with the same password will have the same hashed passwords in your DB, because they all use the same salt.
Again, if your not concerned about "Somebody getting a copy of my DB and getting the hash keys," then why are you bothering to hash the passwords?
