Comment Re:Ministry of Truth? (Score 1) 1073
I'm not sure conquest followed by citizenship and peace, with no genocide or enslavement (romans in Europe) , should be compared to, er, genocide and enslavement.
Comment Re:What a hacker! (Score 1) 496
You'd be surprised...
Comment Re:This isn't helping. (Score 1) 369
Universities can provide their students with free microsoft software through the MSDN Academic Alliance ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSDN_Academic_Alliance ). Mine provides a full subscription to all students.
Comment Re:Preorder now! (Score 3, Informative) 279
Yeah, in other words, Notch just wants to be able to have, in the future, a "Minecraft 2"-type expansion package and charge for it...
D0z.me — the Evil URL Shortener 116
supernothing writes "DDoS attacks seem to be in vogue today, especially considering the skirmishes over WikiLeaks in the past few weeks. The size of a DDoS attacks, however, has historically been limited by how many computers one has managed to recruit into a botnet. These botnets almost universally require code to be executed on the participants' local systems, whether they are willing or unwilling. A new approach has been emerging recently, however, which uses some simple JavaScript to achieve similar ends. d0z.me is a new service that utilizes these techniques, but provides a unique twist on the idea. Posing as a legitimate URL shortening service, it serves users the requested pages in an iFrame, while simultaneously participating in a DDoS attack in the background. No interaction is required beyond clicking the link and staying on the page. This makes it relatively trivial to quickly mount large-scale DDoS attacks, and affords willing participants plausible deniability in the assault."
Comment Re:Hosting customers are running away to europe (Score 1) 115
I've been hosting in europe longer than that, but since the beginning of this year I've been hosting with Serverloft, a german company (they also have a datacenter in the U.S.). Their european website is http://www.serverloft.eu/ . Their current datacenter located in Strasbourg, France is http://www.datadock.eu/en/highlights.php . Their mainstream hosting sister company is http://www.server4you.net/ and their managed hosting sister company is http://www.plusserver.net/ .
One thing to be careful with, though - Their advertised "limited stock - 3 to 5 days delivery" isn't quite true right now, at least in europe. I've been waiting for my latest order for two weeks - They said something about delivery problems. Maybe it's the weather, I hear it's been pretty bad up north.
Comment Re:Hosting customers are running away to europe (Score 2) 115
I'm european. I used to buy my dedicated hosting in the U.S. for several reasons - Low latency to my lots of american users, good location for international routing, prices, etc. Then after a series of setbacks caused by companies with bad business practices (read extortion), increasing prices and, yes, scary laws, I finally relented and moved to europe. Never looked back! And I'm sorry to say I also regularly convince others to move from the U.S. to europe.
Microsoft, Apple, EMC, and Oracle Form Patent Bloc 113
An anonymous reader writes "When Novell finally sold itself, part of the deal included the sale of 882 patents to a consortium backed by Microsoft. Thanks to a tip from Florian Mueller, it turns out that Microsoft's partners are Apple, Oracle, and EMC, which raises questions about where these companies are heading and what it means for the rest of the industry."
Should Wikipedia Just Accept Ads Already? 608
Hugh Pickens writes "Large images of Jimmy Wales have for weeks dominated each and every page on Wikipedia, making Wales arguably the single most visible individual on the planet. Now Molly McHugh writes that Wikipedia is once again pleading for user donations with banners across the top of its site with memos from purported authors and this week, Wales stepped up the shrillness of his rallying cry by adding the word 'Urgent' to his appeal. Wales attempted the same request for donations last year, and failed to meet the company's goal until Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar donated $2 million and Google stepped in with another $2 million gift to the foundation. This time around the foundation is approximately $7 million short of its 2010 fundraising goal, and Wikipedia analysts are saying the site would be better off with a marketing scheme as Alex Konanykhin of WikiExperts explains that the donations-only, no-commerce model restricts Wikipedia to relying exclusively on free volunteers, losing opportunities to involve qualified professionals who charge for their time in addition to the thirty staff members already on the Wikimedia payroll. 'Advertising is not cool. You're not as cool if you have advertising. But you know what else is not cool? Begging,' writes Jeff Otte. 'We do not care if there is advertising on Wikipedia, so long as it is not ridiculously invasive. So please, replace your sensitive mug with a Steak 'n' Shake ad or something, and start making advertisers pay for people to have stuff for free and not feel bad about it. It's the Internet's way.'"
Submission + - Humble Indie Bundle 2 (humblebundle.com)
An anonymous reader writes: (insert satisfactory story here) http://www.humblebundle.com/
Cheap 3D Fab Could Start an Innovation Renaissance 258
blackbearnh writes "An article over on O'Reilly Radar makes the argument that, just as inexpensive or free software development environments have led to a cornucopia of amazing Web and mobile applications, the plummeting cost of 3D fabrication equipment could enable myriad new physical inventions. The article was prompted by a new Kickstarter project, which if funded will attempt to produce a DIY CNC milling system for under $400. Quoting: 'We're already seeing the cool things that people have started doing with 3D fab at the higher-entry-level cost. Many of them are ending up on Kickstarter themselves, such as an iPhone 4 camera mount that was first prototyped using a 3D printer. Now I'm dying to see what we'll get when anyone can create the ideas stuck in their heads.'"
BitTorrent Client Offers P2P Without Central Tracking 218
Shiwei writes "While BitTorrent is the most popular P2P protocol, it still relies on several centralized points for users to find the files they are looking. There have been several attempts at making BitTorrent more decentralized, and the latest Tribler 5.3 client is the first to offer the BitTorrent experience without requiring central trackers or search engines. Tribler offers some very interesting technologies; the latest version enables users to search and download files from inside the client. Plenty of other clients offer search features, including the ever-popular Torrent, but Tribler's results come from other peers rather than from a dedicated search engine. Users can search and download content without a server ever getting involved; everything is done among peers, without the need of a BitTorrent tracker or search indexer."
John Carmack Not Enthused About Android Marketplace 163
An anonymous reader writes "During an in-depth and informative interview, Doom creator and id Software co-founder John Carmack opines on iOS game development, the economics of mobile development vs. console development, why mobile games lend themselves to more risk-taking and greater creativity, and finally, why he's not too keen on the Android Marketplace as a money-making machine. '...I'm honestly still a little scared of the support burden and the effort that it's going to take for our products, which are very graphics-intensive.'"
Comment Re:List of US facilities? (Score 1) 810
Didn't they just share everything with a bunch of major newspapers and let them decide what to release? At least that's the idea I had?
Using the Web To Turn Kids Into Autodidacts 230
theodp writes "Autodidacticism — self-education or self-directed learning — is nothing new, but the Internet holds the promise of taking it to the masses. Sugata Mitra, an Indian physicist whose earlier educational experiments inspired the film Slumdog Millionaire, is convinced that, with the Internet, kids can learn by themselves so long as they are in small groups and have well-posed questions to answer. And now, Mitra's Self-Organized Learning Environments (SOLE) are going global, with testing in schools in Australia, Colombia, England and India. On their own, children can get about 30% of the knowledge required to pass exams, so to go further, Dr. Mitra supplements SOLE with e-mediators, amateur volunteers who use Skype to help kids learn online."
