Comment what they didn't mention (Score 4, Funny) 386
a genetically engineered cyanobacterium that produces liquid hydrocarbons: diesel fuel, jet fuel and gasoline
did they didn't mention the bacteria only eats human flesh?
Comment Re:astrologers don't care about this, well, didn't (Score 1) 468
Paying for nonsense is irrational. Do the world a favor and give this money to a charity or the homeless.
Do you pay for cable or satellite TV?
Comment Re:marketing marketing marketing... (Score 1) 334
Cydia brought this to the iPhone but it will be nice to see the ability to turn on other app store abilities like you can on android.
Exactly. The app store is only a choke point if you have one of them. If you have cydia and one or two others then the argument put forward by Jimmy Wales is weakened.
Comment Re:Here's why they are doing this (Score 2) 321
So stand up and do something. Go join one of the groups wanting to destroy the US government and help out. Walk the talk, little geek, or sit on your fat ass and post screed that no one other than you think are relevant and intelligent.
There is no statement in the GP's post that they are against the approach they outlined..... you've just assumed they were and are doing nothing about it. Perhaps they are proud of how the USA can persecute someone without a guilty verdict....
Comment Re:What's next? (Score 1) 340
Comment Re:"Finally?" (Score 1) 231
Clearly the fact that Google and Facebook are built largely on open source software is meaningless. Who's ever heard of those? No, it's when foreign governments start using open source software that people will pay attention
and funny thing is I work within a foreign government department and i've pushed open source fairly hard - The resistance is based around "American Enterprise don't use it so we wont either".
Comment To the Boss: (Score 1) 7
I hereby declare that I will have a 'relationship' with one of the girls from accounting, and hopefully that girl who works at reception.
Yours
IT guy.
Browser Exploit Kits Using Built-In Java Feature 96
tsu doh nimh writes "Security experts from several different organizations are tracking an increase in Windows malware compromises via Java, although not from a vulnerability in Windows itself: the threat comes from a feature of Java that prompts the user to download and run a Java applet. Kaspersky said it saw a huge uptick in PCs compromised by Java exploits in December, but that the biggest change was the use of this Java feature for social engineering. Brian Krebs writes about this trend, and looks at two new exploit packs that are powered mainly by Java flaws, including one pack that advertises this feature as an exploit that works on all Java versions."
Comment Re:what a stupid article (Score 1) 235
kit is the same word used in the acronym SDK.
Comment Re:Stop with the "Just a plant" nonsense (Score 2) 477
If a bunch of pot smokers want to turn their brains to Jello and wreck their lungs, throats and mouths, let them. They are hurting no one but themselves. If you' say that we'll have increased health care spending, so what? If pot were legalized, you can believe that A) every single private health insurance company is going to mandate tests for marijuana and other drugs and deny coverage to those smoking pot without a prescription.
Of course insurance companies already want to know if you smoke or chew tobacco which will affect your lungs, throats, mouth, but do insurance companies currently check for people 'turning their brains to Jello' by testing if they watch Fox news?
Are You Ready For the Digital Afterlife? 108
theodp writes "Dave Winer's call for Future-Safe Archives goes mainstream in Rob Walker's NY Times Magazine cover story on how the Internet can provide a certain kind of immortality to those who are prepared. To illustrate how digital afterlives might play out, Walker cites the case of 34-year-old writer Mac Tonnies, who updated his blog on Oct. 18, 2009, sent out some public tweets and private messages via Twitter, went to bed and died of cardiac arrhythmia. As word of his death spread via his own blog, Tonnies's small, but devoted audience rushed in to save his online identity. 'Finding solace in a Twitter feed may sound odd,' writes Walker, 'but the idea that Tonnies's friends would revisit and preserve such digital artifacts isn't so different from keeping postcards or other physical ephemera of a deceased friend or loved one.' Unfortunately, how long Mac Tonnies's digital afterlife will remain for his Web friends and parents is still a big question, since it's preserved in a hodge-podge of possibly gone-tomorrow online services for which no one has the passwords. Hoping to fill the need for digital-estate-planning services are companies like Legacy Locker, which are betting that people will increasingly want control over their digital afterlife. 'We're entering a world where we can all leave as much of a legacy as George Bush or Bill Clinton,' says filmmaker-and-friend-of-Tonnies Paul Kimball. 'Maybe that's the ultimate democratization. It gives all of us a chance at immortality.'"
Comment Re:Outer Limits Intro ..... (Score 2) 128
I guess you can now apply the business meaning....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_integration & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_integration
The entire entertainment chain being controlled all the way vertically: entertainment production, manufacture of devices and what you can watch; and horizontally across all distribution channels and devices that you watch it on.
basically the Apple business model.
Comment Re:Perhaps. (Score 3, Informative) 446
That was Bruce Schneier on Security:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/11/tsa_backscatter.html
There's talk about the health risks of the machines, but I can't believe you won't get more radiation on the flight. Here's some data:
A typical dental X-ray exposes the patient to about 2 millirems of radiation. According to one widely cited estimate, exposing each of 10,000 people to one rem (that is, 1,000 millirems) of radiation will likely lead to 8 excess cancer deaths. Using our assumption of linearity, that means that exposure to the 2 millirems of a typical dental X-ray would lead an individual to have an increased risk of dying from cancer of 16 hundred-thousandths of one percent. Given that very small risk, it is easy to see why most rational people would choose to undergo dental X-rays every few years to protect their teeth.
More importantly for our purposes, assuming that the radiation in a backscatter X-ray is about a hundredth the dose of a dental X-ray, we find that a backscatter X-ray increases the odds of dying from cancer by about 16 ten millionths of one percent. That suggests that for every billion passengers screened with backscatter radiation, about 16 will die from cancer as a result.
Given that there will be 600 million airplane passengers per year, that makes the machines deadlier than the terrorists.
(bold added for emphasis by russ1337)
Comment either that or.... (Score 1) 181
widely seen as a way to protect the traditional telecom operators' profits
either that or one of the Chinese ruling party had a bad experience on chatroulette.
South Korea Launches First Electric Bus Fleet 168
An anonymous reader writes "The Seoul Metropolitan Government just rolled out the world's first commercial all-electric bus service. The buses were designed to be as efficient as possible — each bus can run up to about 52 miles on a single charge and they have a maximum speed of about 62 miles per hour. The vehicles' lithium-ion battery packs can be fully charged in less than 30 minutes and they also feature regenerative braking systems that reuse energy from brakes when running downhill."
