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Comment So the gist of the article is..... (Score 4, Informative) 106

MongoDB would have been perfect based on the structure of the data, but the client didn't want to pay for setup and hosting costs, DynamoDB was the cheaper alternative, but more of a pain in the ass to implement. Makes we wonder if the hosting cost savings offset the additional development time.

Comment Ars Technica Lnk (Score 5, Informative) 385

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/fbi-stumped-by-pimps-androids-pattern-lock-serves-warrant-on-google.ars

The one thing I found amusing about the whole thing is that PhD supposedly stood for "Pimpin' Hoes Daily". Then I read this:

Her $500 a night went straight to Dears, though, who "took care of her" in his own special way. As San Diego's Union Tribune reported, Dears found out the woman had spoken to a man who wanted to help her get off the streets. So Dears "beat her up in the back seat of his Cadillac and then forced her to get into the car's trunk, she testified. While in the trunk, she was driven from East Main Street in El Cajon to Hotel Circle in Mission Valley, she testified."

Major league asshole. I hope he gets the book thrown at him.

Comment Sound (Score 4, Insightful) 56

I can't help but wonder... why am I watching a NASA video where the crater's falling on the moon makes sound in a vacuum?

I know it's artistic license and all, but aren't videos like this reserved for nerds, who actually care about things like accuracy?

Comment Faster Mersenne Prime Calculations? (Score 3, Interesting) 271

From what I know, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) uses a Fast Fourier Transform to quickly find the square of a number. This is a required part of the Lucas-Lehmer test (the test that determines if the number is prime).

If this form of FFT can do fast squaring, it will reduce the amount of time taken to find new, large primes.

This is a potentially exciting development in this field.

Firefox

Notes On Reducing Firefox's Memory Consumption 297

Skuto writes "At yesterdays linux.conf.au Browser miniconference in Ballarat, Australia, Mozilla engineer Nicholas Nethercote gave a detailed presentation about the history of Firefox's memory consumption. The 37 slides-with-notes explain in gritty detail what caused Firefox 4's memory usage to be higher than expected, how many leaks and accidental memory use bugs were tracked down with Valgrind plugins, as well as the pitfalls of common memory allocation strategies. Current work is now focused on reducing the memory usage of popular add-ons such as AdBlock, GreaseMonkey and Firebug. Required reading for people working on large software projects, or those who missed that Firefox is now one of the most memory-efficient browsers in heavy usage."

Comment Re:For example, this is dangerous for women (Score 1) 286

I do work in the adult industry, although it's on the IT end, not the performer / production end. Nice to see you here.

For those of you who don't know, 2257 regulations force any pay-site owner to have documentation for all the actors on every single scene on their site. This documentation is supposed to certify that the talent is above 18 years of age. Some of the time, it's a release form.

Other times, it's a copy of the person's drivers license! So, what often happens is that anyone who wants to use 2257 solutions that integrate with the site's CMS are actually storing drivers licenses online.

So, often enough, in order to get an actress's real information (drivers license, phone number, address), it's simply a matter of licensing content online for the purpose of selling it.

I've often wondered how many adult performers have had stalkers from other people in the adult industry with easy access to this sort of information. I'm sure quite a few.

I feel for you.

Here's hoping that the 2257 laws get struck down, or at least amended with more reasonable provisions. These kind of laws don't only benefit stalkers, but also identity thieves. What worries me with the facial recognition patterns like what's mentioned in this story is that eventually someone will be able to upload a porn picture, and get the actor/actresses private information. I imagine something like this will be made illegal, but then again, identity theft isn't exactly legal either.

Comment Re:Google Apps? (Score 2) 161

What's worse is what are they going to do for people who are using a secondary gmail account just to be on Google+ for the moment? Are they going to provide a way of migrating your Google+ settings between a regular Google Profile and an Apps for Domains user?

Probably not. So I'm going to be stuck deciding if I want to keep switching logins whenever I go on Google+, or actually try and re-add everyone that I have on my other account (and ask them nicely to share back with me).

Overall, the way they handled this has been piss-poor. They shouldn't be neglecting their Apps for Domains users since those are the people who are going to be the most loyal to what you're trying to do.

Businesses

Submission + - Bad data led to BP Oil Spill & Financial Meltd (balancedinsight.com)

mattwarden writes: Flying blind when making decisions without supporting data is bad enough, but even worse is believing your data is giving you insight into a process or situation when it isn't. "I'd rather be blind than misled."

Greater risk may result when an entity improperly interprets its data, or believes its data can answer questions that it can't answer. In fact, bad or misunderstood data contributed to both the current BP oil spill crisis and the bank meltdowns of 2008-09.

Image

Prince Says Internet Is Over 450

the_arrow writes "According to the artist currently known as Prince, 'The internet's completely over.' At least that what he says in an interview with the British newspaper Mirror. Quoting Prince: 'The internet's like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you.'"

Comment And if my aunt had a dick she'd by my uncle... (Score 5, Informative) 249

I work in the Adult Industry on a Content Management System for paysites. We just demonstrated support for the iPad at the recent Xbiz show using H.264.

It's fine and dandy that one company has proclaimed that they'd get rid of Flash given the chance. That doesn't say much for the rest of the industry, now, does it?

I know there are a lot of Open Source Advocates on Slashdot, but let's face it: Paysite operators are in the game to maximize their profits. This is done by:

a) Reaching as many people and devices as possible.
b) Decreasing bandwidth
c) Minimizing disk space and hardware.

They don't care about the war between WebM and H.264. They only care about having their sites work with as many people as possible. In this case, HTML5 brings iPad support to their sites.

The problem here ultimately is that the codec war with HTML5 is still undecided. If you're going to use HTML5's video element exclusively, you're going to end up being FORCED to use two formats of video for all the browsers - one for WebM and one for H.264.

That's all well and good, but multiple formats takes up space. Granted a lot of pay sites offer multiple download options like WMV, DivX and Quicktime, but when it comes to watching a full movie in a browser, only one format is needed here - H.264. Let the browsers that support H.264 use the video tag. Let browsers that don't use a Flash player backup.

This still won't change after WebM has support within Flash because of the iPhone and iPad. As the mobile arena heats up, WebM will start to appear lacking without Apple support. Even though the iPhone is a small percentage of the total phone market, it says a lot when the CEO has one and wants his websites to work on it.

So in sum - flash isn't going anywhere. It will remain as a backup player for 5 years mininum.

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