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Hardware

Submission + - Stephen Fry and DVD Jon back USB Sniffer Project (kickstarter.com)

An anonymous reader writes: bushing and pytey of the iPhone DevTeam and Team Twiizers have created a Kickstarter project to fund the build of an open-source/open-hardware high-speed USB protocol analyzer. The board features a high-speed USB 2.0 sniffer that will help with the reverse engineering of proprietary USB hardware, the project has gained the backing from two high-profile individuals Jon Lech Johansen (DVD Jon) and Actor and Comedian Stephen Fry

Comment TFA has been withdrawn. (Score 2, Informative) 827

http://www.malcolmsteward.co.uk/?p=2495

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The SATA Cable Saga
Posted by Malcolm Steward on 8/20/10 Categorized as Audio

I have withdrawn the article that appears to have upset so many computer enthusiasts.
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etc. He claims that he received death threats. Some people have too much time on their hands, and/or take things way too far.

Comment Re:And? (Score 1) 179

Sure, I'll agree with you on some of these points, but:

Your phone rings, you pick up. You hear a momentary "click" as you're transferred to an operator, who tells you that you've just won a trip to Jamaica, and that he needs your credit card information to proceed with awarding you your trip. What do you do? Do you assume that he's legit and dole out your credit card to him, or do you use your brain?

The same thinking isn't applied to web objects often enough at all. So, Average Joe may not understand the fundamentals upon which a web application is built -- nor should they have to -- but they should certainly understand the fundamentals of human behaviour. If not, clicking on every link and every popup is certain to teach them a thing or two, fairly quickly.

Also, how is this Facebook's problem? They provide the medium, but they can't be responsible for the message it delivers, or they'd be actively censoring everything everyone does on their site. Have you seen some of the drivel these sites deliver? Can you imagine being one of the operators charged with keeping it all in line? I can't. I'd go mad. Or, rather, I'd go mad if I were policing today's level of FB content -- if FB were censored, I doubt it would ever have become this popular.

Comment And? (Score 5, Insightful) 179

This is not new news, really. There is always some scam going around that takes advantage of the inability of most users to distinguish untrusted content from trusted content, not to mention the people who click Yes to every pop-up without understanding what they've just done.

Facebook is a gold mine for scams like this. There are way too many people using the site that don't care about the dangers. Apathy and ignorance are best ways to spread this kind of thing, and they are found aplenty in any social networking crowd, at least when it comes to the technology behind the social aspect.

Sci-Fi

How Do You Greet an Extraterrestrial? 803

The LA Times is running a story about Earth Speaks, a companion project to SETI, which focuses on how we would communicate with intelligent extraterrestrial life, should we happen to discover it. Far more effort has been devoted to searching for signals or a means to communicate than the question of what we might say once contact is established, and the folks at SETI have set up a website to gather opinions on what the best questions and statements are. "So far, the messages break down into a few distinct categories. Some people want to throw a block party to welcome the aliens to the neighborhood. Others, less trusting, would warn the aliens that we've got guns and know how to use them. Another group, possibly influenced by having seen too many movies, would have us hide under the bed until they go away. 'If we discover intelligent life beyond Earth, we should not reply — we should freeze and play dead,' wrote one contributor." What would you say first to an alien?
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft applies to patent RSS

Cyvros writes: "Microsoft has decided that it wants to patent RSS. The full patent application can be viewed here. Wired's Monkey Bites blog has also covered it.

From the Wired article:
Public outcry quickly followed since Microsoft had little if anything to do with the development of RSS. Dave Winer, the self-described inventor of RSS, lashed out via his blog claiming, "presumably they're eventually going to charge us to use it."

As an aside, it'll be interesting to watch just how Apple and the Linux/BSD crowd will react to this, especially if the patent is granted."

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