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Comment Re:Rather basic question (Score 2) 113

Nope, seems about right. But you can reinfect a PC by inserting an infected USB key and viewing the contents, so until you know the infection-vectors (which took a while to discover) you'd have difficulty staying clean.

Stuxnet was made to stay undetected as long as possible - it only mucks about with attached drives (rapidly spinning them up and down) at long intervals and for short periods. So instead of a room full of exploding centrifuges, you get an abnormally high failure-rate. It even records sensor data from normal operation and replays it while it's messing with the drives to hide itself from anyone monitoring it.

Comment Overthinking it (Score 5, Insightful) 113

Israel is (by far) the most nervous about Iran's nuclear program, and already had one pre-emptive attack on a nuclear plant under it's belt that (in their worldview) was a resounding success and is a point of national pride.
So one of the drives targeted by stuxnet is manufactured in China...I hate to state the obvious, but what isn't?

Comment Re:adjustments (Score 1) 307

You observe, hypothesise, test, and then refine the hypothesis. Sometimes it takes a lot of testing before you find a case where the hypothesis makes predictions that are wrong (e.g. Newtonian gravity)

...and other times, the very first prediction that you test yields an instant fail.

Comment Re:iOS can't play Flash videos (Score 1) 182

Read the summary, you say? Okaaay:

While the HTML5 and Flash standard debate rages, Apple, a major promoter of HTML5, has allowed its iOS devices to run Flash videos.

The device does not 'run' Flash videos - it renders HTML5 video served up over the web just like a bajillion other apps.

Apple has given approval to an app developed by Skyfire that translates Flash code into HTML5.

That would make the app an interpreter, which would be (a) highly impractical, (b) grounds for rejection by Apple and (c) irrelevant to the task of playing video. It's not the app but an external server that transcodes the video-stream, which is in any case not the same as "translating Flash code".

[...] the Skyfire app downloads the Flash video on Skyfire's server [...]

The app does not download the Flash video; it visits a website that downloads and transcodes the requested video. The app downloads only HTML5 video.

The app is embedded in the Safari browser.

That would make the app a browser plugin, which is very unlikely. Presumably the reverse is true (a Safari control embedded in the app).

Seems to me that the GP is both correct and on-topic, whereas the summary that you recommend reading is...questionable.

Comment Re:Seriously? (Score 1) 85

When you read an article that assumes knowledge of something you've never heard of, why not treat it as a prompt to go learn something new, rather than a personal affront?

Businesses

The Case For Apple Buying Facebook 255

The article makes the case that Jobs has been hinting that he wants to actually spend some of the $51 billion Apple has been sitting on, and that Facebook is a likely candidate. Considering how thin the Ping social network is, and the integration issues the two companies have had, there are some good reasons for such a deal. And a heck of a lot of reasons why not.

Comment Re:Wow! (Score 1) 170

Do you really see trillions of dollars of benefits from such a thing?

It's not like the money would be created or destroyed either way. More interesting to think of the resources that would be expended - lots of brainpower, lots of gear, a bit of fuel and a few lives risked.

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