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Software

Submission + - Princeton Comp. Sci. Homework is U.S. State Secret

KSim writes: "According to this blog post ( http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/blogs/prox/2007/0 5/treasonous_use_of_comp_sci_hom.html ), an intro level computer science assignment at Princeton is legally prohibited by U.S. law from being shared with certain other nations:

Legal notice. It is a violation of US law to export your solution for this assignment to foreign governments or embargoed destinations (Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Serbia, Sudan, Syria, and Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan as of January 2000). It is also illegal to import your solution into several countries, including France, Iran, Iraq, and Russia.
The assignment has students write a "Public Key Cryptosystem" described here:

"The RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) cryptosystem is widely used for secure communication in browsers, bank ATM machines, credit card machines, mobile phones, smart cards, and the Windows operating system. It works by manipulating integers. To thwart eavesdroppers, the RSA cryptosystem must manipulate huge integers (hundreds of digits). The built-in C type int is only capable of dealing with 16 or 32 bit integers, providing little or no security. You will design, implement, and analyze an extended precision arithmetic data type that is capable of manipulating much larger integers. You will use this data type to write a client program that encrypts and decrypts messages using RSA."
"
Microsoft

Submission + - Vista sucks batteries.

LWATCDR writes: It looks like more issues with Vista Vista drains notebook batteries. Using the Aero interface really eats into your notebooks battery life. Of course one of the new "features" of Vista is supposed to be better power management. Of course this provides a great opportunity for a showdown. How long until someone loads Vista on a MacBook and compares run time? It would provide a flat playing field now that Apple makes Intel powered notebooks. For our next test how about Vista and Ubuntu on a Dell? What review site will step up to this challenge?
Privacy

Submission + - Are electronic speeding tickets going to far?

coondoggie writes: "No one likes to get a speeding ticket and lord knows most traffic citations are irritating in general, but do you want to see them move into the digital age? The question may be moot in certain parts of the country in fact. According to a story on Stateline.org, the state of Washington in the Pacific Northwest, home to Microsoft and other high-tech icons, is the latest to join the e-citation trend. It's outfitting several state police cars with devices that permit traffic citations to be processed electronically. Other states are looking into similar systems, Maryland for example recently said it would be implementing an "e-citation" program soon. North Carolina and Alabama already have them and a study by the U.S. Department of Transportation said at least 27 states were handling citations electronically in some form. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1486 5"
Music

Submission + - iTunes-only Track Debuts in the Top Ten

hondo77 writes: Carrie Underwood's new single, "I'll Stand By You", has debuted at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100, selling over 100,000 copies in less than a week. The reason to care is that this single is only available on iTunes. Macworld reports that this is the first time an iTunes-only single has debuted in the Top Ten. The icing on the cake is that all proceeds from the sales go to charity as part of the Idol Gives Back program.
Businesses

Submission + - The Hacker's Guide to Investors

jdavidb writes: "Paul Graham writes today on what hackers should know about investors if they want to build a company that will attract funding.

Because most investors are a different species of people from founders, it's hard to know what they're thinking. If you're a hacker, the last time you had to deal with these guys was in high school. Maybe in college you walked past their fraternity on your way to the lab. But don't underestimate them. They're as expert in their world as you are in yours. What they're good at is reading people, and making deals work to their advantage. Think twice before you try to beat them at that.


If you're a hacker, here's a thought experiment you can run to understand why there are basically no hacker VCs: How would you like a job where you never got to make anything, but instead spent all your time listening to other people pitch (mostly terrible) projects, deciding whether to fund them, and sitting on their boards if you did? That would not be fun for most hackers. Hackers like to make things. This would be like being an administrator.


Investors always say what they really care about is the team. Actually what they care most about is your traffic, then what other investors think, then the team.
"
Censorship

Submission + - Uncensor the Internet with this Firefox plug-in

An anonymous reader writes: This Firefox plug-in uncensors the internet. For example, it puts the "hi" back in "bulls**t" and the "i" back in "b*tch." Because if it's okay to remind someone of the word, why not just use the actual word? We're all adults on the internet, right? (also available as Greasemonkey script)
Java

Submission + - BFO Offers You Unrivalled Technical Support

Jonathan Cookson writes: "London, England, 30 April 2007, — Big Faceless Organization (BFO), has been busy finding out what you like, what you want and delivering more than you expect. The company carried out extensive qualitative research over the last twelve months, within the client base and among all parties who tested BFO software.

When asked how easy it was to deploy, you said you liked it; building an application using BFO products was relatively hassle free to integrate with your applications and, custom issues were dealt with promptly by the BFO technical support team.

You said you wanted peace of mind over the future costs of software and protection from it spiralling out of control. In response BFO's support contract now entitles you to all new versions of the software free so you never have to pay for a new version again. In addition, standard support terms remain in place; priority response rates, product update notifications, priority for bug fixes and R&D feature requests.

Furthermore, ad hoc Support is also available free of charge to customers testing and evaluating the fully functional "pre-live" demo versions of Big Faceless software.

CTO Mike Bremford says, "Our diverse client base continue to provide us with new and exciting challenges posed through specific upgrade or bug fix requests. We are always happy to assist them whilst continually developing and improving our products". Over 85% of BFO customers, that responded, rated the software as high quality to excellent.

A spokesman for Abbot Laboratories, the global broad-based health care company, says "Support is the best I have seen in quite sometime. We will continue to use your products, and would recommend them to peers".

Verizon, the US telecommunications giant says "Thank you for your commitment to provide outstanding support to Verizon"

Admios, the Californian based systems integrator says "Support team was excellent. Fast to respond".

For more customer testimonials go to http://big.faceless.org/casestudies.jsp

For more information on how Big Faceless products can improve your business go to http://www.bfo.co.uk/

About BFO: BFO is a global resource of Java components for the international B2B market. Products include the Big Faceless Report Generator, PDF and Graph Libraries. The client portfolio includes Boeing, Lehman Brothers, Harvard University, HSBC, Fannie Mae, Roche, Toyota and the US Department of Energy. For more information about BFO visit http://bfo.co.uk/"
Education

Submission + - Asia Producing Unemployable Engineers

LegoDoug writes: "National Public Radio's Adam Davidson reports that "China and India don't have enough engineering talent to do the basic work they need at home ... Graduates from India's top engineer schools are grabbed up quickly by high-paying foreign firms, but ... the second- and third-tier programs graduate engineers not qualified to work internationally or domestically. A recent report from the Chinese government revealed that fully 60% of engineering school graduates are not only unemployed, they are unemployable — they simply don't have any marketable skills."
Space

Submission + - Mars warming... could it be man made?

Bill Nortman writes: "According to NASA scientists in the article (TimesOnline) Mars has seen the same rate of warming as the earth. So can we deduct from this that a few man made object we have sent to the red planet have caused it to heat up? I think not! This just clearly shows the amount of heat being given off by the sun as changed rapidly in recent time. So if the real cause of global warming is increase solar activity what can we do? Actually I think alot. For example, we could change it that all new roofs on house be made of high reflective substances which will reflect more light, like the ice caps. We could do the same for cars and even parking lots. The lighter the color the more reflection back into space and the less absorbed. We; as the government by the people for the people, could install large pieces (rolls) of reflective materials over large less-inhabited areas (such as deserts). We could really return a lot of energy back into space, thus reducing the effects of the warming sun.."

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