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Submission + - Mis-read IP almost lands Australian man in jail (superuser.com)

An anonymous reader writes: This writer on the Super User Blog was approached by police who suspected him of impersonating somebody online and hacking into their Facebook account to post defamatory content. In reality, it turns out that it was a different user with the same TeleCo. When police requested the IP address of the hacker, a representative at the user's iPhone carrier accidentally swapped two numbers in his IP address, leading police to the wrong suspect. Fortunately, this user escaped without any charges, and received a discount from the TeleCo for his troubles, but it's a grave warning of what can happen when information is misread in the digital era.
Books

Submission + - RMS: Throw Down Your e-Book Chains!

theodp writes: Richard Stallman is kind of a Ralph Nader for our digital world, so his latest essay — The Danger of E-books — might be thought of as kind of an Unsafe at Any Speed for e-books. CNET reports that RMS is bemoaning the e-book's loss of freedoms that most of us take for granted with physical books and placing the blame on corporate powers. 'Technologies that could have empowered us are used to chain us instead,' RMS writes. 'We must reject e-books until they respect our freedom...E-books need not attack our freedom, but they will if companies get to decide. It's up to us to stop them. The fight has already started.' Them there's fightin' words, right Steve?

Submission + - State-changing metallic material developed (gizmag.com)

cylonlover writes: We may not yet have the liquid metal depicted in the Terminator movies, but scientists have now developed something that's vaguely along the same lines. German materials scientist Dr. Jörg Weißmüller and Chinese research scientist Hai-Jun Jin have created a metallic material that can change back and forth between being strong but brittle and soft but malleable, via the application of an electrical current.

Comment Gedankenexperiment (Score 1) 315

Suppose we imagine the following: a large room with a level floor, with no open windows and still air all around. Put the proposed cart down somewhere. From the cart's point of view, there is a prevailing wind of zero no matter what direction you've placed it.

Now the claim is that the cart can go faster than the prevailing wind. So once you place the cart down, it should move on its own. Now just where did it get the energy to do that??!

Submission + - How Star Wars trumped Star Trek for scientific acc (shadowlocked.com)

An anonymous reader writes: When George Lucas added the 'ring around the Death Star' effect to his 1997 re-release of Star Wars episode IV: A New Hope, the revision was almost as hated as Greedo shooting first, and to boot was seen as a knock-off of the seminal 'Praxis effect' in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). But a debunking astronomer claims that the Federation got it wrong and the fan-boys should thank Lucas for adding some scientific accuracy to his fictional universe.

Submission + - Futurama Writer Creates New Math Theorem (geekosystem.com)

kevin_conaway writes: In the latest episode of Futurama, writer Ken Keeler wrote and proved a new math theorem based on group theory. From the article:

We all knew the writing staff of Futurama was brainy, but this is something else. In the episode “The Prisoner of Benda,” the Professor and Amy use a new invention to switch bodies. Unfortunately, they discover that the same two brains can’t switch twice and have to come up with some equation to prove that, with enough people switching, eventually everyone will end up in their rightful form. To work out the ridiculous brain switching plot line, writer Ken Keeler (who also just happens to have a PhD in mathematics) ended up writing and proving an entirely new theorem

Comment Re:My ATM pin was 1457664 at one point. (Score 1) 472

If that's supposed to be the number of bytes on a disk, it must have been a strange-looking creature.

First we factor out 512 bytes per sector. That leaves 2874. Now 2874 has a prime factorization of 3 * 13 * 73. Since those are all prime the best possibility is that you're describing a three-sided floppy with 13 sectors per track and 73 tracks. (Or is that a 73-sided floppy with 13 tracks of 3 sectors? There are only 6 possibilities, none of which make any sense.)

Comment Re:BIOS (Score 1) 462

When you give computers to the public they usually get abused. In my experience computer lab, and library computers are more messed up than any computer I have at home.

But yes, assuming they treated them like you and me, I think it would be a great idea. It would give us peace of mind, and decrease cyber crime.

Comment Re:Netflix streaming (Score 1) 171

They can do both, and the two goals reinforce each other -- the skills to do both are pretty non-overlapping anyway. For me, the streaming has been a non-starter so far because I run a MythTV media center and own a Wii -- the only place I can use the streaming right now is on my laptop (a Mac), which is not the best movie viewing machine.

This brings me into the market now, and makes me think that when I move out of my current place (the account is in my roommates name) I'll get my own subscription as well. Assuming I'm not a total outlier (not many people will have MythTV, but there are many people with only a Wii, DVD player, and crappy cable box attached to their TV,) this greatly expands the number of people using streaming, and will thus encourage content producers to see that they need to find a good way to monetize streaming video.

Just because this doesn't benefit you directly and in particular, that doesn't mean its not worthwhile, and in this case a rising tide raises all boats.

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