Comment I Want My... I Want My... (Score 1) 109
...I Want My Half Life Three!
Comment Re:Short NFLX @ $299, wish me luck! (Score 1) 722
Hey, don't congratulate me yet! I got a ways to go before I cover and I could be blown out of the water any minute by a Ben Bernanke sound bite. Shorting the berserk ponzi casino always comes with plenty of risk!
Comment Short NFLX @ $299, wish me luck! (Score 1) 722
A company squeezed between pissed off customers, greedy content providers, jilted ISPs, and an insolvent postal service looking for things to cut. I was waiting for the cracks to start showing, and it happens at an all time high! What a great short -- wish me luck!
On a more relevant note, what was so amazing about the price increase announcement was the sales pitch itself... Streaming for $8, DVDs for $8, and both for $16! What a deal! Only a Harvard MBA could think up such an insulting bargain.
Comment Checkmate! (Score 1) 385
Our distinguished ladies and gentlemen can hardly even rearrange 1% of the deck chairs on this Titanic without everything breaking down. 1% of the 2012 budget, and it has to result in this ridiculous piece of theater. The worst of it all is that I only have myself to blame. All those decades I went to school, went to work, chased girls, watched t.v., played video games, all the while failing to notice the global corporate tendrils gaining control over nearly every aspect of my life.
Now it doesn't matter who I vote for -- the result is the same. Lawyer types on K street write the laws of my land in computer generated 5000 page bills that I could never have a hope to understand -- all to either maintain the status quo or to advance the collective kleptocratic agenda. Doubtless, our corporate masters will steal everything they can while it all slowly collapses! I could say more, but Dancing With the Stars is on, and I never miss an episode.
Comment Brings back memories... (Score 3, Insightful) 553
Bjarne and the Community's creation was the bona fide beginning of my career. When I started, I thought I was a 7 in C++. Several years later, I was a 5. I wrote my best and worst code in the language, over 15 years, and I am still running into issues in the language that challenge me today. C++ helped me learn a lot about myself along the way, and I am grateful to Bjarne and the Community at large for that. A good article and interview, if not a tad brief.
Comment Let's have zero tolerance for zero tolerance! (Score 2, Insightful) 115
Destroying the countries where attacks originate is a broken doctrine, IMO. Use of force should always be measured, and focused, lest history revile us. The ease of false flag operations in "cyberspace" make the nature of our responses to attacks even more important. I would dismiss Chertoff out of hand were it not for the possibility that, rather than harmless BS, talk like this may encourage a doctrine that will allow our government to start wars and engage in various intrigues, to evil ends. Chertoff co-birthed the anti-Christ fetus disingenuously called the "USA PATRIOT" act, so we should tell him to take his "overwhelming force" and sell crazy some place else. We seem to be stocked up already.
Comment A strong argument against stop-loss orders (Score 1) 218
There are traders that I know who use stop loss orders reflexively. I never used them because they only purport to limit losses; they are really market orders triggered by price action, and they will chase bids down and leave you out of the game before you are even done with your coffee at the market open. I never imagined them chasing bids all the way down to zero until recently! Since the PTB don't seem intent on fixing anything, just affixing blame, I would strongly discourage stop-loss orders. They are not a substitute for being both present and disciplined while you are trading anyway!
Why Are Terrorists Often Engineers? 769
An anonymous reader writes "As a follow up to their September 2008 article, IEEE Spectrum revisits the question of why a disproportionate number of terrorists have engineering degrees. According to their own summary of the interview with political scientist Steffen Hertog, 'nearly half of [individuals involved in political violence] with degrees have been engineers,' a rather ambiguous statement especially for a publication targeted at engineers. The interview makes some interesting points (lack of job opportunities for engineers despite a relatively high social status) and some suspect ones (e.g. framing Islamic culture into the western left vs. right politics). Above all, IEEE Spectrum tries really hard to associate engineers with terrorism for some reason."
Microsoft Should Dump Middlemen, Build Own Phones 262
suraj.sun writes "Microsoft has a long and illustrious history of operating system sales. The model has served the company well on the PC, but if it wants to make money in the phone market, it needs to start thinking like a consumer electronics company and start making its own phones."
Comment Re:Don't let reality get in the way of your anger (Score 1) 1217
I would have liked this post better if we lived in an alternate universe where you can't run Windows on a Mac. Respectfully, reality makes the parent post a complete waste of time. A Mac is a place where you can learn about Mac, Windows and Linux tech all in the same place either by dual booting or virtualizing; take your pick. Parent poster will not get this on his/her Dell, at least not by legal, reliable, nor easy means. Prices for Macs have gotten better but, unfortunately, are still quite high, and Apple seems to think we don't need to modify/maintain our hardware. These are, IMO, the only reasons one would need to buy a Dell at all.
Maybe this argument about which laptop this school should be *forcing* kids to buy is moot. Is it not so that online/portal/cloud type services have evolved to a point where they may obviate the need for a specific platform anyway? IMO, any school that is only pushing platform specific software down for kids to learn on has invested wrongly in our future. In 20 years, it could be that only a few big greedy companies will be left desperately clinging to this idea. The rest of us will have moved to the online platform for most of our daily needs.
Apple iAd Drawing Antitrust Scrutiny 260
snydeq writes "US regulators are planning to investigate whether Apple is shutting out third parties such as Google and Microsoft in advertising on the iPhone and iPad under revised terms to its iAd mobile ad platform. Apple's revised developer terms prohibit ad analytics collection unless it is provided to an independent ad service provider whose primary business is serving mobile ads. If enforced, the proposed terms would prohibit developers from using Google's AdMob service on the iPhone, according to AdMob founder Omar Hamoui. Developers using AdMob to deliver ads on cross-platform mobile apps would have to go through an alternative service for the version of the app running on an Apple platform, according to the terms. It's an impractical solution that some are calling restrictive."
Jupiter Is Missing a Belt 187
mbone writes "Jupiter just went through Superior Conjunction (i.e., went behind the Sun as seen from the Earth), so it has been out of view for a while. Now that it has returned, it is different — the South Equatorial Belt (SEB) is missing. The SEB has about 10 times the surface area of the Earth, so this is not a small change. Here are a series of photos of Jupiter's new look. The Great Red Spot typically inhabits the southern border of the SEB, but it doesn't seem to be affected by the change. It's a pity that this happened at Superior Conjunction, and that there is no satellite in Jupiter orbit, so details of the change are largely missing. The SEB has previously gone missing in 1973 and 1990. Since no one really knows what makes the Jovian belts, no one knows why they disappear either. If the belts are really just material from deeper layers coming to the surface, it is possible that the convection has stopped for some reason, or that high-altitude clouds have covered it over."
Millions Continue To Click On Spam 210
An anonymous reader writes "Even though over 80% of email users are aware of the existence of bots, tens of millions respond to spam in ways that could leave them vulnerable to a malware infection, according to a Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) survey. In the survey, half of users said they had opened spam, clicked on a link in spam, opened a spam attachment, replied or forwarded it — activities that leave consumers susceptible to fraud, phishing, identity theft, and infection. While most consumers said they were aware of the existence of bots, only one-third believed they were vulnerable to an infection."
Ubisoft's New DRM Cracked In One Day 678
Colonel Korn writes "Ubisoft's recent announcement that upcoming games would require a constant internet connection in order to play has been discussed at length on Slashdot ('The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work'). Many were of the opinion that this new, more demanding DRM would have effectiveness to match its inconvenience, at least financially justifying its use. Others assumed that it would be immediately cracked, as is usually the case, leaving the inconvenience for paying customers and resulting in a superior product for pirates. As usual, the latter group was right. Though Ubisoft won't yet admit it, Skid-Row managed to crack the new DRM less than a day after it was first released."
Microsoft Wants To Participate In SVG Development 292
rossendryv writes "After many years of fighting against the standard, Microsoft announced they are joining the WC3's SVG working group to help with the development of SVG. 'We recognize that vector graphics are an important component of the next-generation Web platform,' said Patrick Dengler, senior program manager on Microsoft's Internet Explorer team in a blog post."
