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Man Sues Neighbor For Not Turning Off His Wi-Fi Screenshot-sm 428

Posted by samzenpus from the have-you-never-wondered-why-I-drink-only-distilled-water-or-rain-water-and-only-pure-grain-alcohol dept.
Scyth3 writes "A man is suing his neighbor for not turning off his cell phone or wireless router. He claims it affects his 'electromagnetic allergies,' and has resorted to being homeless. So, why doesn't he check into a hotel? Because hotels typically have wireless internet for free. I wonder if a tinfoil hat would help his cause?"
Space

Big Dipper "Star" Actually a Sextuplet System 88

Posted by kdawson from the toil-and-trouble dept.
Theosis sends word that an astronomer at the University of Rochester and his colleagues have made the surprise discovery that Alcor, one of the brightest stars in the Big Dipper, is actually two stars; and it is apparently gravitationally bound to the four-star Mizar system, making the whole group a sextuplet. This would make the Mizar-Alcor sextuplet the second-nearest such system known. The discovery is especially surprising because Alcor is one of the most studied stars in the sky. The Mizar-Alcor system has been involved in many "firsts" in the history of astronomy: "Benedetto Castelli, Galileo's protege and collaborator, first observed with a telescope that Mizar was not a single star in 1617, and Galileo observed it a week after hearing about this from Castelli, and noted it in his notebooks... Those two stars, called Mizar A and Mizar B, together with Alcor, in 1857 became the first binary stars ever photographed through a telescope. In 1890, Mizar A was discovered to itself be a binary, being the first binary to be discovered using spectroscopy. In 1908, spectroscopy revealed that Mizar B was also a pair of stars, making the group the first-known quintuple star system."
The Almighty Buck

America's Army Games Cost $33 Million Over 10 Years 192

Posted by Soulskill from the your-tax-dollars-at-play dept.
Responding to a Freedom Of Information Act request, the US government has revealed the operating costs of the America's Army game series over the past decade. The total bill comes to $32.8 million, with yearly costs varying from $1.3 million to $5.6 million. "While operating America's Army 3 does involve ongoing expenses, paying the game's original development team isn't one of them. Days after the game launched in June, representatives with the Army confirmed that ties were severed with the Emeryville, California-based team behind the project, and future development efforts were being consolidated at the America's Army program office at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. A decade after its initial foray into the world of gaming, the Army doesn't appear to be withdrawing from the industry anytime soon. In denying other aspects of the FOIA request, the Army stated 'disclosure of this information is likely to cause substantial harm to the Department of the Army's competitive position in the gaming industry.'"

Comment Beware Google's penchant for auto-updates... (Score 5, Informative) 197

by courcoul (#30367660) Attached to: Google Upgrades Chrome To Beta For OS X, Linux

Beware that the first time you run Chrome, it will install their Keystone auto-update facility, with which Google feels free to update whatever they want, whenever they want and however they want. Even when you're not running the browser, as the Keystone agent will launch itself automatically at system boot.

You have been warned.

Comment There goes the farm... (Score 1) 453

by courcoul (#29186679) Attached to: Wikipedia To Require Editing Approval

A few weeks back there was an article on how the growth of Wikipedia had levelled off. The average rate of new/expanded/revised articles was tapering off in most subject areas. And that was with an "open" Wikipedia. Now if contributors are going to have to go thru the hoops to get something "approved" by editors appointed thru an obscure process and who might niggle on subject, content, extent or style, that sounds like a good recipe for stagnation.

AH, the Great Depression of 2009 has finally hit the 'pedia...

Comment Size... (Score 4, Funny) 194

by courcoul (#27937497) Attached to: Apple and Microsoft Release Critical Patches

> Probably the most surprising element of the Apple update is the overall size of it; 442MB for the point update, and 729MB for the ComboUpdate."

Well, the Server version of the Combo updater runs close to the whole GB. In other words, it would seem the patch is virtually overwriting the entire OS.

Wonder if the the Vista patch is doing the same, overwriting with Windows 7? :D
Security

Submission + - Google gets more intrusive with Earth

Submitted by courcoul
courcoul writes: With the new Google Earth 5.0.11337.1968 release, a new mandatory update policy gets imposed on the user. When you start it up for the first time, a pop-up states that:

This software will update any Google software on your computer when new versions become available. Google Software Update verifies updates and is safer than downloading files from the Internet yourself.
To continue using Google Earth, you must accept the new Google privacy policies and allow Google Software Update to run in the background on your computer.

Meaning that your computer will get infected with a background process that will run automatically whenever Google decides, taking this choice and control from the user and there is no opting out as per their Terms of Service, Section 12:

12.1 The Software which you use may automatically download and install updates from time to time from Google. These updates are designed to improve, enhance and further develop the Services and may take the form of bug fixes, enhanced functions, new software modules and completely new versions. You agree to receive such updates (and permit Google to deliver these to you) as part of your use of the Services.

Having seen how gladly Google bends over for entities such as the Chinese government and from the security point of view, their "do no evil" mantra is pretty much moot and granting the software this level of freedom in your computer is unacceptable. All previous versions of Google Earth did check and alerted the user that an update was available, even offering a download link, but never went ahead and updated by themselves.

Comment "Available to the public"? I don't think so... (Score 1) 140

by courcoul (#26238185) Attached to: Cryptol, Language of Cryptography, Now Available To the Public
Ok, so Galois has decided that, given the depressed economy, a few extra potential customers might be a good idea. Cause what you get is just the concept of the language. Whatever your bright mind may decide to do with it will remain bottled up until you pay for the full COMMERCIAL product, since what you download for free just lets you see that "gee, whiz, this might work in the Real World when I pay for the whole shebang...". And, given the origins of the product, I'm pretty sure there will be a lot of caveats as to who's on the DOD/NSA/CIA worthy-of-using-cryptol list.
Businesses

Submission + - The Irony: Mac comes around

Submitted by courcoul
courcoul writes: We lived to see the day when IBM and Apple reunited, even after the second sulked over to Intel cause the first wouldn't give it the microprocessors it wanted. Seems IBM is switching over to Macs instead of having to deal with Vista. The irony of things...

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