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Submission + - Do tech-guys end-up happier than arts-types? 1

Submitted by
Bruce G Charlton
Bruce G Charlton writes: "Blogger Michael Blowhard attends a 35 year high school reunion and finds that the men who went into technical careers seem (so far) happier than those who chose the arts. http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2007/09/reunions_2_guyh_1.html#004452 " Now that we're in our early 50s, the calmest and least-troubled guys are the ones who are working in technical fields. Without exception, these old classmates are now mellow and happy souls. They have the contentedness of people leading comprehensible, satisfying lives, lives characterized by finite obligations and dependable rewards. At the other end of the mood-spectrum are the angst-ridden bunch: namely, guys who long ago fell in love with the arts. (...) The guys in this group are jumpier and more tormented. They may perhaps have known giddier highs, but they've also experienced darker and more frequent lows, as well as far fewer steady, count-upon-able stretches. Where the tech guys keep on a dependable plane — they have routines, and they enjoy them — the arts guys are still living like post-grads, moment to moment. Most are still caught up in the "doing my art" vs. "keeping up a day job" plight. (...) Perhaps, despite all its ravished-by-aesthetic-bliss moments, the love affair with art has finally been more like a bad and humiliating marriage, wrecking one's chances at what might have been straightforward happiness. A small discovery: By one's early 50s, emotional rollercoastering will have taken a toll not just on the nerves but on the body. Many of our artsguys these days seem exhausted, strung out, even physically twisted.""
United States

Submission + - Some New Toys for DHS, but do we need them? (reuters.com)

Submitted by dragonturtle69
dragonturtle69 writes: An interesting though light on details article from Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN2143732820070921?sp=true, covers some of the advancements in "Homeland Security". My least favorite part was from Bruce Walker toward the end of the article, "We can read fingerprints from about five meters .... all 10 prints," said Bruce Walker, vice president of homeland security for Northrop Grumman Corp. "We can also do an iris scan at the same distance."

While I have true appreciation for the technology involved in these devices, this just seems like too much money to spend on high technology that is easily thwarted by low technological means (sunglasses, gloves).

Should we evolve toward a society that can guarantee no crime will go unsolved through surveillance from birth till morgue, or should we focus on the cause of criminal activity, including what is considered legal, and eliminate it through societal change?
Real Time Strategy (Games)

Submission + - Thurn & Taxis Post Roads Map in Germany 1786

Submitted by
Jack Polo
Jack Polo writes: "The Torre e Tasso family, from Val Sassina, owned several courier services in Lombardy from about 1290. From 1490 on, Francesco de Tassis, called Franz von Taxis, was granted the right to carry government and private mail throughout the Empire and in Spain. Thus, the Thurn & Taxis family operated for 350 years, postal services in the major part of western Europe, from Spain to Hungary. This map, by Homann's Heirs, presents the 1786 Thurn & Taxis post-roads in the German Empire and in the neighbouring countries. Be aware that some roads, especially in the ecclesiastical principalities are missing.
Johann Baptist Homann (1664 — 1724) was imperial geographer from 1715 in Nurnberg and his work was continued by his son Christoph under the name Hommänischen Erben.
http://www.euratlas.net/cartogra/deutschland_1786/ index.html"
The Internet

Submission + - Internet Voting Coming To Alabama's Troops

Submitted by
InternetVoting
InternetVoting writes: "Alabama's Governor has proposed a plan allowing Alabama's deployed troops to cast ballots over the Internet. The planned has garnered support from both Republicans and Democrats, including the Secretary of State who said "This is a wonderful opportunity for Alabama to lead the nation in support of the rights of our service men and women around the world." From the article: "General Mark Bowen of the Alabama National Guard said deployed units are assigned voting officers charged with helping troops vote, but the process often takes too long and some ballots are not received in time. 'Electronic voting is the way to go,' Bowen said.""
Patents

Submission + - Microsoft Wants Patent on Indentation

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "Throw some text in a worksheet, make the columns small, and color the cells to denote a hierarchy. Like this. That, my friend, may constitute patent infringement for the next twenty years if the USPTO grants Microsoft the patent it's seeking for Minimizing Indenting (actual patent image). Just one more example of how Microsoft's lawyers are making the world a better place through more joyful and inclusive design."
Encryption

Submission + - AACS broken for all HD and Blu-ray disks

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Two months after Muslix64 initially publicized his method for getting AACS keys, a user on Doom9 has found the processing key, which is able to decrypt all disks for both formats released thus far. The exploit can even be reused for future keys. This will allow the creation of a one-click backup utility and is a major blow against DRM.
OS X

Submission + - The state of virtualizing OS X

Submitted by seriouslywtf
seriouslywtf writes: There's been a lot of speculation about whether people will eventually be able to run Mac OS X in a virtual machine, either on the Mac or under Windows. Well, it seems that both Parallels and VMWare have definitively told Ars Technica that until Apple explicitly gives them the thumbs up, they're not going to be enabling users to virtualize OS X even though it may be possible to do so. From the first article, Parallels said:

"We won't enable this kind of functionality until Apple gives their blessing for a few reasons," Rudolph told Ars. "First, we're concerned about our users — we are never going to encourage illegal activity that could open our users up to compromised machines or any sort of legal action. This is the same reason why we always insist on using a fully-licensed, genuine copy of Windows in a virtual machine — it's safer, more stable, fully supported, and completely legal."
And VMWare added:

"We're very interested in running Mac OS X in a virtual machine because it opens up a ton of interesting use cases, but until Apple changes its licensing policy, we prefer to not speculate about running Mac OS X in a virtualized environment," Krishnamurti added.
Space

Submission + - Has a 'Second Space Race' Begun?

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "I was stumbling around on Wikipedia and came across an interesting entry entitled "The Second Space Race" (referring to the race between countries, not private enterprise). I've also have been noticing more and more recent news and articles using the phrase. But also in the news are plans for some countries to band together for parts of or all of their near future plans. Are we truly on the cusp of another space race between countries? If so, why was there such a large gap between the first space race and this one? Has the idea to privatize space exploration already failed? If this is a space race, what are the winning conditions? Colonizing the moon? Manned Mars expedition? Is this a sign that countries today are still as divided as the US and USSR were during the first race or is this just a healthy competition like the Olympics?"
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - New eBay scam, without violating ebay policy

Submitted by
Bert64
Bert64 writes: "It seems that eBay allows you to say one thing about the location of an item in the auction description, but then if the item turns out to be defective to supply a completely different address, in another country, where the item can be returned at buyer's expense. No mention of this was in the original auction listing, in the hope of fooling those who would normally not buy from a foreign seller. Details on http://www.ev4.org/ of how i was stung by this, and how it can so easily be abused by anyone to profit by ripping off unsuspecting buyers while ebay sits back and does nothing about it. So anyone can ship defective items, and then make the returns process expensive enough that people won't bother."
The Internet

Submission + - Walmart downloads reject Firefox, Apple browsers

Submitted by babooo404
babooo404 writes: Last week, Walmart launched their online video download service. Immediately there were posts that the service did not work with the Firefox or Safari browsers. There was a collective, "WTF" when this happened as this is 2007, not 1997. Now it appears that reports are out that Walmart has COMPLETELY turned off the ability to get into the application at all by Firefox, Safari or any other browser it does not like.

http://www.centernetworks.com/walmart-in-bed-with- microsoft-no-to-firefox

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