Comment Re:Mechanical failure (Score 4, Funny) 223
And thus the obligatory "Slashdot automobile analogy" requirement is fulfilled.
Comment Re:This is clearly a hoax (Score 2, Informative) 989
It was a case in Dover, PA.
The "Intelligent Design" folks had their collective asses kicked.
Comment Doomed from the start (Score 1) 366
The phone had virtually no in-store presence, and the staff at the two (corporate) T-Mobile stores I tried basically said that since they don't have one to show and cannot give accurate advice on it, there was no reason for anyone to buy one.
Also, apart from the Blackberries they sell and a few other random (non-smart) phones, none of them offer UMA, which is a deal-breaker for me. Without the UMA option, my signal strength in the two places I use it most (at home and at work) is essentially zero. So, I'm a long-time (going on 10 years now) T-Mobile customer (and was a VoiceStream one before Deutche Telecom bought them and renamed them T-Mobile) kept in place by "Golden Handcuffs", namely a plan they do not offer anyone but that is too good to pass up.. I pay $45/month for 1000 Minutes/Unlimited Texts/Unlimited Data (Via the Blackberry data plan) and free nights and weekends.
Submission + - NJ Police must speak language of the suspect (nj.com)
nj_peeps writes: "New Jersey's Supreme Court ruled today that police must inform drunken driving suspects in a language they speak or understand that they are legally required to take a Breathalyzer test. The 4 to 3 decision written by Chief Justice Stuart Rabner, stemmed from the case of German Marquez, who was charged with driving drunk when he rear-ended another car near a Plainfield intersection on Sept. 20, 2007.
Comment Re:Read Articles Second Comment ! (Score 1) 306
But wait, isn't the Earth only 6000 years old?
White House Tackling the Economics of Cybersecurity 47
GovTechGuy writes "White House Cybersecurity czar Howard Schmidt will be hosting a meeting Wednesday with the Secretaries of DHS and Commerce in which he is expected to discuss the administration's new attempt to change the economic incentives surrounding cybersecurity. Right now, launching attacks on private companies is so cheap and relatively risk-free that there's almost no way that industry can win. The White House could be considering things like tax incentives, liability and insurance breaks, and other steps to try and get companies to invest in protecting their networks. It's also likely to dovetail with a step up in enforcement, so hackers be wary."
Comment Re:Coo (Score 3, Funny) 232
Stage a coo? As in a pigeon call?
Submission + - Roman Polanski: The Fearless Child Rapist (cnn.com)
Binkleyz writes: Roman Polanski, critically acclaimed Writer, Actor and Producer, has successfully fought extradition to the United States from Switzerland. The United States requested his extradition to allow him to be sentenced on his 1978 conviction for "Statutory Rape", in which he admitted to drugging and molesting a 13-year old. Switzerland has rejected the request, on several grounds, including not sending along some required paperwork.
Comment Re:Not sure that is a correct reading of the opini (Score 1) 263
hit the wrong button, so continuing my thought..
If I read the opinion correctly, the fact that the messages were examined for a non-disciplinary reason (in this case, to ascertain if the upper limit on characters sent per month was sufficient to encompass all of the required official communications) made it legally "ok" for them to do so. If the rationale behind the examination was for a disciplinary or other reasons, the search would not have been reasonable.
Comment Not sure that is a correct reading of the opinion (Score 1) 263
1. IANAL
That said, I read the entire opinion, and there is a nuance in what was decided that seems to have been overlooked here, at least thus far.
In the case in question, the police officer named in the suit was using his work-issue pager to send personal messages, but the initial inquiry was a result of the good-faith request of the police chief to check into whether the issue was that the number of characters per month (set at 25,000) that had been contracted with Arch Wireless was sufficient to the task. Only upon examination of the details of those transmissions did the personal nature of them come into focus.
If I read the opinion correctly, the fact that the messages were examined for a non-disciplinary reason (in this case, to ascertain if the upper limit on characters sent per month was sufficient to encompass all of the required official communications.
Comment Re:All your tweets (Score 1) 92
I am the master of the twit.
Remember this fucking face. Whenever you see twit, you'll see this fucking face. I make that shit work.
It does whatever the fuck I tell it to. No one rules the twit like me. Not this little fuck.
None of you little fucks out there. I AM THE twit COMMANDER! Remember that, commander of all twits! When it comes down to business, this is what I do
Comment Re:XP is the 90's? (Score 1) 1213
Or maybe Whistler's Mother, which was around in 1871..
Comment Re:How come... (Score 1) 680
I have to imagine that there are a subset of fatal traffic accidents out there that would not have been fatal had the vehicle(s) in question been traveling at the posted speed limit.
Comment Re:How come... (Score 3, Insightful) 680
You know, I've always heard that, but it took some perspective as an adult to realize what unrealistic crap that is.
Unless you happen to live in an area with an excellent public transportation system, and also happen to work somewhere with one, it seems like driving is positively necessary to, you know, pay the bills and all.
You might argue that one could walk or ride a bicycle or something, but that simply does not reflect the way that the vast majority of people get around. The average commute in the US is 16 miles. That is a distance that is not casually covered in anything but a motor vehicle.
Submission + - The Economics of Targeted Attacks (threatpost.com)
Trailrunner7 writes: Researchers and security vendors have been telling us for years now that attackers have developed sophisticated, targeted attacks designed to separate victims from their money as quickly and cleanly as possible. If that's so, why aren't all of us being compromised on a regular basis? A researcher from Microsoft Research posited at the WEIS 2010 workshop Tuesday that the answer is simple economics.
The amount of time and money it takes to send out 10 million phishing emails versus five million emails is negligible once the attacker has his infrastructure in place. As a result, these attacks are still quite prevalent, despite their diminishing economic return. But even with relatively low returns per attack, these kinds of scalable attacks yield a high profit for professionals, said Cormac Herley of Microsoft Research."Non-scalable attacks have to be selective attacks. Every attack costs you something," Herley said. "If the non-scalable attacks can't match the return of the scalable attacks, she should change tactics. At equal costs, she needs a way better yield. But competing on yield makes no sense because when she extracts the same value per victim, there's too much effort."
The amount of time and money it takes to send out 10 million phishing emails versus five million emails is negligible once the attacker has his infrastructure in place. As a result, these attacks are still quite prevalent, despite their diminishing economic return. But even with relatively low returns per attack, these kinds of scalable attacks yield a high profit for professionals, said Cormac Herley of Microsoft Research."Non-scalable attacks have to be selective attacks. Every attack costs you something," Herley said. "If the non-scalable attacks can't match the return of the scalable attacks, she should change tactics. At equal costs, she needs a way better yield. But competing on yield makes no sense because when she extracts the same value per victim, there's too much effort."
