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Comment Re:Depends how you define characters (Score 2, Informative) 186

You're correct. And to complete it:

"Larger content (Concatenated SMS, multipart or segmented SMS or "long sms") can be sent using multiple messages, in which case each message will start with a user data header (UDH) containing segmentation information. Since UDH is inside the payload, the number of characters per segment is lower: 153 for 7-bit encoding, 134 for 8-bit encoding and 67 for 16-bit encoding." -- from Wikipedia

So, in this case it's 134 bytes and not 140 since the payload probably doesn't fit in a single 140 bytes.

Comment Re:Why not respond to all AAAA DNS requests? (Score 1) 264

No; your DNS server resolves the domain names at Google, so technically they're correct (although it may be a bit confusing). The idea is that ISPs with proper IPv6 can register their DNS servers so that Google will give out AAAA records to those DNS servers. Google can't help a single user since there's no way for them to influence the DNS query.

I still think that it'd be great if maybe OpenDNS or a similar service would provide an option to get AAAA records for Google.

Comment Re:Why not respond to all AAAA DNS requests? (Score 3, Informative) 264

From Google:

To qualify for Google over IPv6, your network must have good IPv6 connectivity to Google. Multiple direct interconnections are preferred, but a direct peering with multiple backup routes through transit or multiple reliable transit connections may be acceptable. Your network must provide and support production-quality IPv6 networking and provide access to a substantial number of IPv6 users. Additionally, because IPv6 problems with users' connections can cause users to become unable to access Google if Google over IPv6 is enabled, we expect you to troubleshoot any IPv6 connection problems that arise in your or your users' networks.

Simply said, some networks may have borked IPv6 which would mean that users will be unable to access Google. I can understand that they're doing this before rolling it out to everyone. Maybe there could be something like OpenDNS for IPv6 so that more advanced users have a choice?

Linux Business

Ubuntu 8.10 Outperforms Windows Vista 689

Anonymous writes "By now a lot has been reported on the new features and improvements in Ubuntu 8.10; it also looks like the OS is outperforming Vista in early benchmarking (Geekbench, boot times, etc.) At what point does this start to make a difference in the market place?" (And though there are lot of ways to benchmark computers, Ubuntu 8.10 with Compiz Fusion is certainly prettier on my Eee than the Windows XP that it came with.)

Comment Re:Utter mess (Score 1) 302

Paying bills is usually done by wiring money using the bank's online banking interface (or paper) or by automatic billing through the bank account. Credit cards aren't used to pay bills; paying in stores is usually done with debit cards (Maestro) or credit cards (but people rarely use them). The online system is used only to purchase over the web; it's way more popular than credit cards (everybody has a bank account and fees are low). The API system works a bit like PayPal.

How Facebook Stores Billions of Photos 154

David Gobaud writes "Jason Sobel, the manager of infrastructure engineering at Facebook, gave an interesting presentation titled Needle in a Haystack: Efficient Storage of Billions of Photos at Stanford for the Stanford ACM. Jason explains how Facebook efficiently stores ~6.5 billion images, in 4 or 5 sizes each, totaling ~30 billion files, and a total of 540 TB and serving 475,000 images per second at peak. The presentation is now online here in the form of a Flowgram."
Security

Fingerprints Recoverable From Cleaned Metal 178

dstates points out a recent article from guardian.co.uk which discusses a new method by which to recover fingerprints from metal. The method relies on corrosion caused by sweat and other biological residues on the metal's surface. Quoting: "The patterns of corrosion remain even after the surface has been cleaned, heated to 600C or even painted over. This means that traces of fingerprints stay on the metal long after the residue from a person's finger has gone. The chemical basis of the change is not yet clear, but [Dr. John Bond] believes it is corrosion by chloride ions from the salt in sweat. These produce lines of corrosion along the ridges of the fingerprint residue. When the metal is heated, for example in a bomb blast or when a gun is fired, the chemical reaction actually speeds up and makes the corrosion more pronounced."
Microsoft

Return of the '70s Microsoft Weirdos 338

theodp writes "On the eve of the company's move from Albuquerque to Seattle in 1978, a famous photo was taken (in a shopping mall no less) of the original Microsoft team, looking mighty sharp in their '70s outfits. Almost 30 years later, as Bill Gates prepares to depart from Microsoft, the group (looking older, but better) reconvened for a retake."
GNU is Not Unix

Enforcing the GPL On Software Companies? 480

Piranhaa"I currently use an IPTV box that runs software by Minerva Networks. When you ssh into the box, you are greeted with a BusyBox v1.00 (ash) shell. It's clearly running a flavor of Linux (uname -apm outputs: Linux minerva_10_0_3_99 2.4.30-tango2-2.7.144.0 #29 Wed Mar 16 16:16:16 CET 2005 mips unknown). However, when you look at their Web site there is no publicly available source code. Since the GPL in both BusyBox and the Linux kernel require that anyone using and distributing the binaries of this software make source available to everyone, what would one do in order to enforce this? I've personally emailed Minerva and left voicemails with no reply."
Security

Safari "Carpet Bomb" Attack Still a Risk 117

SecureThroughObscure writes "Just a short time after Apple's recent acknowledgment of and patch for the Safari Carpet Bomb 'blended' IE flaw, Microsoft researcher Billy Rios shows that Safari is still useful in a blended attack, this time with Firefox 2/3. (ZDNet's Nate McFeters also spread the word.) Rios claimed that he is able to use Carpet Bomb, despite the recent patch, to steal arbitrary files from victims who also have Firefox 2/3 installed. Both Rios and McFeters pointed out that Apple, which took some heat for not originally patching, actually did a good job of addressing the issue, as the code execution angle was not originally understood (the details came out later). Rios is withholding details of the new attack vector until Apple has had time to patch or respond to this issue."
Bug

Hotmail Full Version Incompatible With Firefox 3 258

An anonymous reader notes that Hotmail's full version doesn't work with Firefox 3. Users get the following message when they try to log in: You are temporarily on the classic version of Windows Live Hotmail due to an error encountered during login. Before trying again, please clear your cache and cookies. (Clearing cache and cookies doesn't fix it.) At least 8 other bug reports have been duped to this one. The fault apparently lies with the Hotmail site, not Mozilla — maintainer Dave Garrett assigned the bug to Tech Evangelism, explaining: "I'll... move this over to TE, as my guess is this [is] the site's fault (just bad user agent sniffing?)."
The Media

Wikipedia's Content Ripped Off More Egregiously Than Usual 284

Ultraexactzz writes "Wikipedia's content is licensed under the GFDL, which permits such content to be copied with attribution — and Wikipedia is used to its content being copied and mirrored. However, a new website at e-wikipedia.net appears to have taken this a step further by mirroring the entire English Wikipedia — articles, logos, disclaimers, userpages, and all. Compare Wikipedia's About page with e-wikipedia.net's. The site even adds to Wikipedia's normally ad-free interface by including text ads." Just try logging in or actually editing an article, though, and you'll get the message "The requested URL /w/index.php was not found on this server. Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request." If there's credit here, I don't see it — sure looks like it's intentionally misleading readers.
Microsoft

Is Windows Vista in Trouble? 879

Ken Erfourth writes "The Inquirer.net is running a story about what they consider two powerful indications that Vista is failing in the marketplace. One, Dell has reintroduced PCs running Windows XP on its website due to customer demand. Two, Microsoft is conducting a worldwide firesale on a bundle of Microsoft Office 2007/WindowsXP Starter Edition. According to Inquirer.net, at least, these are signs of serious problems selling Vista. Are we seeing the stumbling of the Microsoft Juggernaught with the slow adoption of Windows Vista?"

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