Comment Re:filed under lame news? (Score 4, Funny) 114
mag 5 is a nothing quake. california really needs to get over itself
I think the problem is that California is getting under itself
Submission + - UK finally legalises ripping CDs and DVDs (gizmorati.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In June the UK is set to finally legalise the ripping of your own personal CDs and DVDs Yay?
So as the UK tries to bring itself back into the 21st century and take a break from trying to censor everything or spying on people we get a common sense result, though there are some rules you have to follow of course.
So as the UK tries to bring itself back into the 21st century and take a break from trying to censor everything or spying on people we get a common sense result, though there are some rules you have to follow of course.
Big Bang's Smoking Gun Found 269
astroengine writes "For the first time, scientists have found direct evidence of the expansion of the universe, a previously theoretical event that took place a fraction of a second after the Big Bang explosion nearly 14 billion years ago. The clue is encoded in the primordial cosmic microwave background radiation that continues to spread through space to this day. Scientists found and measured a key polarization, or orientation, of the microwaves caused by gravitational waves, which are miniature ripples in the fabric of space. Gravitational waves, proposed by Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity nearly 100 years ago but never before proven, are believed to have originated in the Big Bang explosion and then been amplified by the universe's inflation. 'Detecting this signal is one of the most important goals in cosmology today,' lead researcher John Kovac, with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement."
Submission + - "Little Foot" Fossil Could be Human Ancestor (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes: He may be called Little Foot, but for human evolution researchers he’s a big deal: His is the most complete skeleton known of an early member of the human lineage. Ever since the skeleton was discovered in a South African cave in the 1990s and named for its relatively small foot bones, researchers have been fiercely debating how old it is, with estimates ranging from about 2 million years to more than 3 million. A new geological study of the cave concludes that Little Foot is at least 3 million years old. If correct, that would mean he is old enough to be a direct ancestor of today’s humans, and could shift South Africa to the forefront of human evolution.
Submission + - A Closer Look at Problems in GnuTLS (huffingtonpost.com)
hyc writes: On HuffPost Code, a look at the obvious problems with GnuTLS from a software design and development process perspective; GnuTLS is still just a pile of vulnerabilities waiting to happen.
Submission + - Microsoft Tries To Woo Users Off Windows XP With Deals For A New PC
An anonymous reader writes: With the Windows XP end of support date now less than a month away, Microsoft is trying to woo users off the ancient 12-year-old operating system. The latest comes in the form of a Microsoft Store deal that offers a $50 gift card, 90-days of free support, and free data transfer with the purchase of a new PC. As always with such offers, however, there are some details worth noting. The $50 digital gift card can only be used towards future purchases at the online Microsoft Store in the US. Free support is hardly anything new for Microsoft Store purchases, though it does cover both phone and chat options. Lastly, the free data transfer option is available to everyone, thanks to a Microsoft partnership with Laplink.
Submission + - EU Votes for Universal Phone Charger
SmartAboutThings writes: The European Union has voted in favor of a draft legislation which lists among the “essential requirements” of electrical devices approved by the EU a compatibility with “universal” chargers . According to a German MEP, this move will eliminate 51,000 tonnes of electronic waste. The draft law was approved by an overwhelming majority of 550 votes to 12 . At the moment, according to estimates, there are around 30 different types of charger on the market, but manufacturers have two years at their disposal to get ready for the new restriction.
Submission + - Judge says prosecutors should follow the law. Prosecutors revolt. (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Late last year, South Carolina State Supreme Court Justice Donald Beatty joined Kozinski. At a state solicitors’ convention in Myrtle Beach, Beatty cautioned that prosecutors in the state have been “getting away with too much for too long.” He added, “The court will no longer overlook unethical conduct, such as witness tampering, selective and retaliatory prosecutions, perjury and suppression of evidence. You better follow the rules or we are coming after you and will make an example. The pendulum has been swinging in the wrong direction for too long and now it’s going in the other direction. Your bar licenses will be in jeopardy. We will take your license.”
You’d think that there’s little here with which a conscientious prosecutor could quarrel. At most, a prosecutor might argue that Beatty exaggerated the extent of misconduct in South Carolina. (I don’t know if that’s true, only that that’s a conceivable response.) But that prosecutors shouldn’t suborn perjury, shouldn’t retaliate against political opponents, shouldn’t suppress evidence, and that those who do should be disciplined — these don’t seem like controversial things to say. If most prosecutors are following the rules, you’d think they’d have little to fear, and in fact would want their rogue colleagues identified and sanctioned.
The state’s prosecutors didn’t see that way. . . . The most plausible explanation for all of these stories is that a significant number of prosecutors just don’t want to be held accountable to anyone but themselves. I suppose a lot of us would like to have that sort of protection when it comes to what we do for a living. But few of us do. And the rest of us don’t hold positions that give us the power to to ruin someone’s life with criminal charges, to convince a jury to put someone in prison or to ask the state to put someone to death.
You’d think that there’s little here with which a conscientious prosecutor could quarrel. At most, a prosecutor might argue that Beatty exaggerated the extent of misconduct in South Carolina. (I don’t know if that’s true, only that that’s a conceivable response.) But that prosecutors shouldn’t suborn perjury, shouldn’t retaliate against political opponents, shouldn’t suppress evidence, and that those who do should be disciplined — these don’t seem like controversial things to say. If most prosecutors are following the rules, you’d think they’d have little to fear, and in fact would want their rogue colleagues identified and sanctioned.
The state’s prosecutors didn’t see that way. . . . The most plausible explanation for all of these stories is that a significant number of prosecutors just don’t want to be held accountable to anyone but themselves. I suppose a lot of us would like to have that sort of protection when it comes to what we do for a living. But few of us do. And the rest of us don’t hold positions that give us the power to to ruin someone’s life with criminal charges, to convince a jury to put someone in prison or to ask the state to put someone to death.
Submission + - Spyware Enabled Open Source and Source Forge. Trust levels? (filezilla-project.org)
An anonymous reader writes: So. New PC which needs Win7 installed on it for work purposes. Have performed a virginal install to an unformatted disk. Whilst doing the updates, I decide to yank the development apps over off the BSD box via SFTP and decide "lets grab filezilla client, it's opensource and I trust it from sourceforge." So, from the project page, I downloaded the installed which comes from sourceforge and noticed it wants to install browser tool-bars. Cancel the installation instantly and walk away to do other things. When I returned 30mins later, I'm presented with malware. "PC Optimizer Pro" and a couple of it's friends. Was any of this software actually opensource? No. Did I want it? No. Trust in SourceForge .. less. Please comment, I've got a clean system to format and re-install and patch so I'll be here most of the day again.
Submission + - Einstein's 'Lost' Model Of the Universe Discovered 'Hiding in Plain Sight'
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Dick Ahlstrom reports that Irish researchers have discovered a previously unknown model of the universe written in 1931 by physicist Albert Einstein that had been misfiled and effectively “lost” until its discovery last August while researchers been searching through a collection of Einstein’s papers put online by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “I was looking through drafts, but then slowly realised it was a draft of something very different,” says Dr O’Raifeartaigh. “I nearly fell off my chair. It was hidden in perfect plain sight. This particular manuscript was misfiled as a draft of something else.” In his paper, radically different from his previously known models of the universe, Einstein speculated the expanding universe could remain unchanged and in a “ steady state” because new matter was being continuously created from space. “It is what Einstein is attempting to do that would surprise most historians, because nobody had known this idea. It was later proposed by Fred Hoyle in 1948 and became controversial in the 1950s, the steady state model of the cosmos,” says O’Raifeartaigh. Hoyle argued that space could be expanding eternally and keeping a roughly constant density. It could do this by continually adding new matter, with elementary particles spontaneously popping up from space. Particles would then coalesce to form galaxies and stars, and these would appear at just the right rate to take up the extra room created by the expansion of space. Hoyle’s Universe was always infinite, so its size did not change as it expanded. It was in a ‘steady state’. “This finding confirms that Hoyle was not a crank,” says Simon Mitton. “If only Hoyle had known, he would certainly have used it to punch his opponents." Although Hoyle’s model was eventually ruled out by astronomical observations, it was at least mathematically consistent, tweaking the equations of Einstein’s general theory of relativity to provide a possible mechanism for the spontaneous generation of matter. Einstein's paper attracted no attention because Einstein abandoned it after he spotted a mistake and then didn’t publish it but the fact that Einstein experimented with the steady-state concept demonstrates Einstein's continued resistance to the idea of a Big Bang, which he at first found “abominable”, even though other theoreticians had shown it to be a natural consequence of his general theory of relativity.
Apple To Unveil Its 'iOS In the Car' Project Next Week 198
An anonymous reader tips news that Apple's efforts to bring iOS to cars will be shown at the Geneva Motor Show next week. 'Drivers will be able to use Apple Maps as in-car navigation, as well as listen to music and watch films. Calls can be made through the system, which will tie into the Siri voice recognition platform so that messages can be read to the driver who can respond by dictating a reply.' Apple's partners in the automotive industry will be Volvo, Ferrari, and Mercedes Benz to start. Apple first said they were working on this system at last year's WWDC.
Submission + - Finnish Hacker Isolates GPS Coordinates from Youtube Video Soundtrack (windytan.com)
An anonymous reader writes: "The signal sits alone on the left audio channel, so I can completely isolate it. Judging from the spectrogram, the modulation scheme seems to be BFSK, switching the carrier between 1200 and 2200 Hz. I demodulated it by filtering it with a lowpass and highpass sinc in SoX and comparing outputs. Now I had a bitstream at 1200 bps."
Submission + - HP Brings Back Windows 7 'By Popular Demand' as Buyers Shun Windows 8
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Gregg Keizer reports at Computerworld that Hewlett-Packard has stuck their finger in Microsoft's eye by launching launched a new promotion that discounts several consumer PCs by $150 when equipped with Windows 7, saying the four-year-old OS is "back by popular demand." "The reality is that there are a lot of people who still want Windows 7," says Bob O'Donnel. "This is a twist, though, and may appeal to those who said, 'I do want a new PC, but I thought I couldn't get Windows 7.'" The promotion reminded O'Donnell and others of the dark days of Windows Vista, when customers avoided Windows 7's predecessor and instead clamored for the older Windows XP on their new PCs. Then, customers who had heard mostly negative comments about Vista from friends, family and the media, decided they would rather work with the devil they knew rather than the new one they did not. "It's not a perfect comparison," says O'Donnell, of equating Windows 8 with Vista, "but the perception of Windows 8 is negative. I said early on that Windows 8 could clearly be Vista Version 2, and that seems to have happened." HP has decided that the popularity of Windows 7 is its best chance of encouraging more people to buy new computers in a declining market and is not the first time that HP has spoken out against Microsoft. "Look at the business model difference between Intel and ARM. Look at the operating systems. In today's world, other than Microsoft there's no one else who charges for an operating system," said HP executive Sridhar Solur in December adding that that the next generation of computers could very well not be dominated by Microsoft. "In today's world, other than Microsoft there's no one else who charges for an operating system."
Submission + - EU: Google should face $1bn privacy fine, not 'pocket money' amounts (v3.co.uk) 1
DW100 writes: Despite Google being fined €900,000 by Spanish authorities and €150,000 in France for its controversial privacy policies in recent months, the EU has admitted this is mere 'pocket money' to the company. Instead, a new legal regime that would have seen Google fined $1bn for breaching data protection laws is needed to make US companies fear and respect the law in Europe.
Comment Re: All missing the point (Score 3, Insightful) 244
That's very naive. What it means is that Google collects more private data, meta data they can cross reference to target ads and still hand it over to the NSA upon request.
