Comment Re:Learn jQuery - Good grief... (Score 1) 438
Of course, once you add in the overhead from those frameworks, PHP isn't any faster anyway.
Comment Re:It'll never happen. (Score 1) 279
And how is that different from any other country?
German food sucks.
Acorns Disappear Across the Country 474
Hugh Pickens writes "Botanist Rod Simmons thought he was going crazy when couldn't find any acorns near his home in Arlington County, Virginia. 'I'm used to seeing so many acorns around and out in the field, it's something I just didn't believe,' said Simmons. Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road. And a lot more calls about squirrel roadkill. Simmons and Naturalist Greg Zell began to do some research and found Internet discussion groups, including one on Topix called 'No acorns this year,' reporting the same thing from as far away as the Midwest up through New England and Nova Scotia. 'We live in Glenwood Landing, N.Y., and don't have any acorns this year. Really weird,' wrote one. 'None in Kansas either! Curiouser and curiouser.' The absence of acorns could have something to do with the weather and Simmons has a theory about the wet and dry cycles. But many skeptics say oaks in other regions are producing plenty of acorns, and the acorn bust is nothing more than the extreme of a natural boom-and-bust cycle. But the bottom line is that no one really knows. 'It's sort of a mystery,' Zell said."
The Greatest Scientific Hoaxes? 496
Ponca City, We love you writes "The New Scientist has an amusing story about the seven greatest scientific hoaxes of all time. Of course, there have been serious cases of scientific fraud, such as the stem cell researchers recently found guilty of falsifying data, and the South Korean cloning fraud, but the hoaxes selected point more to human gullibility than malevolence and include the Piltdown Man (constructed from a medieval human cranium); a ten-foot "petrified man" dug up on a small farm in Cardiff; fossils 'found' in Wurzburg, Germany depicting comets, moons and suns, Alan Sokal's paper loaded with nonsensical jargon that was accepted by the journal Social Text; the claim of the Upas tree on the island of Java so poisonous that it killed everything within a 15-mile radius; and Johann Heinrich Cohausen's claim of an elixir produced by collecting the breath of young women in bottles that produced immortality. Our favorite: BBC's broadcast in 1957 about the spaghetti tree in Switzerland that showed a family harvesting pasta that hung from the branches of the tree. After watching the program, hundreds of people phoned in asking how they could grow their own tree but, alas, the program turned out to be an April Fools' Day joke." What massive scientific hoaxes/jokes have other people witnessed?
Canada Election Result Bad News For DMCA Opponents 311
An anonymous reader writes "For those with a stake in the opposition of Jim Prentice's C-61, the Canadian DMCA, this previous week's election results will be displeasing. The Conservative Party, which promised to reintroduce the DMCA if elected, gained 19 seats this election, mostly at the expense of the flagging liberal party, a mere 12 short of a majority government. The increase in Conservative representation, as well as the relatively low profile of this issue amidst other, more pressing concerns, increases the likelihood that the son of C-61 will come to fruition. On a positive note, the number of MPs supporting Geist's copyright pledge has increased to 34. Given the Conservative Party's historic disregard of public opinion, however, the efforts of the copyright-pledge MPs will have to rally the full opposition across three major parties in order to defeat the bill. A mere 12 MPs now stand between the Canadian public and the MAFIAA's hungry maw."
Why the Kill Switch Makes Sense For Android 384
Technologizer writes "It came out this week that Google's Android phone OS, like the iPhone, has a kill switch that lets Android Market applications be disabled remotely. But it's a mistake to lump Google's implementation and Apple's together — the Google version is a smart, pro-consumer move that avoids all the things that make Apple's version a bad idea."
XKCD Invited To New Yorker "Cartoon-Off" 231
UnknowingFool writes "Farley Katz, who draws for New Yorker magazine, ran into xkcd.com's Randall Munroe in a grocery store. He challenged Munroe to a cartoon-off — each cartoonist to produce drawings about the Internet as envisioned by the elderly, String Theory, 1999, and one's favorite animal eating one's favorite food. In the ensuing short interview, Munroe describes XKCD as 'a webcomic about stick figures who do math, play with staple guns, mess around on the Internet, and have lots of sex. It's about three-fourths autobiographical.'"
FBI Says Dark Market Sting Netted 56 Arrests 130
narramissic writes "A two-year undercover FBI sting operation targeting online 'carder' forums hosted on the DarkMarket.ws Web site has netted 56 arrests and prevented about $70 million in fraud losses, the FBI said Thursday. DarkMarket.ws was widely used by online scammers to buy and sell stolen credit card numbers, other financial information, and even the devices used to make fake banking cards. Before it was shut down earlier this month, the Web site had registered more than 2,500 members. Although Dark Market was thought to have been administered by a criminal going by the name Master Splyntr, German Public Radio reported on Monday that the FBI had been running a sting operation on the site since late 2006, and that Master Splyntr was actually an FBI agent named J. Keith Mularski." Of course, they say it in German; non-German speakers may want to consult the Babelfish.
Homeland Security's Space-Based Spying Goes Live 289
BountyX writes "While America's attention has shifted to the economic meltdown and the presidential race between corporate favorites John McCain and Barack Obama, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) National Applications Office (NAO) 'will proceed with the first phase of a controversial satellite-surveillance program, even though an independent review found the department hasn't yet ensured the program will comply with privacy laws.' NAO will coordinate how domestic law enforcement and 'disaster relief' agencies such as FEMA use satellite imagery intelligence (IMINT) generated by US spy satellites. Based on available evidence, hard to come by since these programs are classified 'above top secret,' the technological power of these military assets are truly terrifying."
Submission + - AppleTV + Interest Lagging, Apple Offers Vaporware
Webster Phreaky writes: "Apple will add new features and capabilities to its iPhone and Apple TV products through a series of future software updates, the company confirmed last night." http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?RSS
With reports from CREDIBLE Columnists or Analysts (not the usual Apple Media Whores) that the iPhone lacking " Analysts say the iPhone isn't smart enough" http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?RSS&newsI D=17058 and the sales of the much hyped "copycat" AppleTV STAGNENT http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/04/20/targ et_stores_to_pick_up_apple_tv.html, it's time for Apple to make the Traditional Marketing fallback ... offer VAPORWARE.
Ask anyone in marketing and sales, especially if they've been stuck with a slacker of a product, and they'll tel you that the number one resource to pull out of the closet of Bad Sales Tactics is promise "future undisclosed updates" and them pretend that you can't be specific right now for various reasons.
Folks and Apple Kool Aid Drinkers, this is just the USUAL Apple and Stevie Gods, err Jobs, marketing B.S. that has been going on since 1984.
You watch, you've been warned.
Submission + - Glitch has users fuming, Google "frantic"
netbuzz writes: "A problem with Google's Personalized Home Page feature has apparently cost a lot of users their carefully crafted doors to the Internet. And Google, which says it is frantically searching for a fix, also acknowledges that it is not sure if it will be able to recover the lost settings.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1456 5"
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/145
Submission + - Trolltech is opensourcing Qt for Java
Anonymous Coward writes: "Trolltech released their second beta of their upcoming product, Qt Jambi, today. With this release they are dual licensing the product under a commercial and a GPL license. Being founded on a very solid framework, Qt, and now with an opensource license, they should be prepared to take on the other established toolkits, like Swing and SWT.
For full details, see the press release:
http://www.trolltech.com/developer/downloads/qt/qt jambi-beta"
Submission + - Adobe to Open Source Flex
An anonymous reader writes: Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced plans to release source code for Adobe Flex as open source. This initiative will let developers worldwide participate in the growth of the industry's most advanced framework for building cross-operating system rich Internet applications (RIAs) for the Web and enabling new Apollo applications for the desktop. The open source Flex SDK and documentation will be available under the Mozilla Public License (MPL).
Perens Counters Claim of GPL Legal Risk 145
Microsoft Delenda Est writes "After ACT, a Microsoft front group, started claiming that the GPLv3 was legally 'risky' and could give rise to anti-trust liability, eWeek has published a rebuttal by Bruce Perens. Aside from the fact that IBM, HP, Red Hat, and a couple dozen corporate lawyers are watching over the creation of the GPLv3, there is already precedent that shows the GPL is unlikely to give rise to any significant liability — Daniel Wallace v. FSF. In that case, pro se litigant Daniel Wallace was all but laughed out of the courtroom for alleging the GPLv2 violates anti-trust law, and the GPLv3 clauses in question are simply clarifications and extensions of clauses in the GPLv2. Presumably, that is why the ACT neglected to cite any precedent substantiating their allegations."
Submission + - Chips that Change
MrYutz writes: If you use this computer chip — you may never have to upgrade. Need a toaster — no problem; need a tri-corder — no problem. Next up at Raytheon — matter to energy converters.
