Comment A New Idea... (Score 4, Insightful) 167
Disable your ad blocker. Ding, instant shitload of ads.
Rogue Satellite Shuts Down US Weather Services 202
radioweather writes "On Sunday, the drifting rogue 'zombie' Galaxy 15 satellite with a stuck transmitter interfered with the satellite data distribution system used by NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS), effectively shutting down data sharing between NWS offices nationwide, as well as weather support groups for the US Air force. This left many forecasters without data, imagery, and maps. Interference from Galaxy 15 affected transmissions of the SES-1 Satellite, which not only serves NOAA with data relay services, but also is used to feed TV programming into virtually every cable network in the US. NOAA's Network Control Facility reports that the computer system affected was NOAA's Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) used to issue forecasts and weather bulletins which uses the weather data feed. They also state the problem is likely to recur again this month before the satellite drifts out of range and eventually dies due to battery depletion."
Comment Re:And in other news... (Score 1) 382
That's because you can't really use HTML 5 to make an ad that is going to be served to users of IE below version 9, in all of which support for HTML 5 does not exist.
So what do you use to advertise IE 9? Either Flash, or Java, or HTML 4 + JavaScript, or some other solution.
Java is bulky. HTML 4 + JavaScript is not that fast in IE 8 and earlier, so it's liable to freeze IE up and disrupt page navigation. Other solutions may mess up even further. You're left with Flash.
UK Wants ISPs To Be Responsible For Third Party Content Online 158
An anonymous reader writes "A key UK government minister, Ed Vaizey (Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries), has ominously proposed that internet service providers should introduce a new Mediation Service that would allow them the freedom to censor third party content on the Internet, without court intervention, in response to little more than a public complaint. Vaizey anticipates that Internet users could use the 'service' to request that any material deemed to be 'inaccurate' (good luck with that) or privacy infringing is removed. No doubt any genuine complaints would probably get lost in a sea of abuse by commercial firms trying to attack freedom of speech and expression."
Comment Google is an ISP? (Score 4, Funny) 71
And I thought Google TiSP was just a joke...
Comment Re:http://www.jerseys-2010.com (Score 2, Funny) 148
I believe you meant http://www.jerseys-2010.xn--mgba3a4fra/
Comment The ccTLDs in question (Score 4, Informative) 148
Iran, Islamic Republic of. ccTLDs: xn--mgba3a4f16a, xn--mgba3a4fra.
The Unicode whitelist on Slashdot is preventing us from having the Farsi reading, so see here.
How Cornell Plans To Purge Campus Computers of Personal Data 164
and so forth writes "Cornell lost a laptop last year with SSNs. Now, they've mandated scanning every computer at the University for the following items: social security numbers; credit card numbers; driver's license numbers; bank account numbers; and protected health information, as defined by HIPAA. The main tools are Identityfinder (commercial software for Windows and Mac), spider (Cornell software for Windows from 2008) and Find_SSN (python script from Virginia Tech). The effort raises both technical questions (false positives, anyone?) and practical issues (should I trust closed source software to do this?). Have other Universities succeeded at removing confidential data? Success, here, should probably be gauged in terms of diminished legal liability after the attempted clean up has been completed." Note: this program affects the computers of university employees and offices, rather than students' personal machines.
Comment Re:Sorry, Slashdot doesn't understand APIs. (Score 1) 95
Slight inaccuracy, you can't DM a user on Twitter unless you're following that user and they also follow you back. You can still @reply to them, and they'll see it in their Mentions tab, which I don't know how many people check and how often.
You're entirely right about it being easy to search for keywords the company is interested in, so that it can know who is talking about it, though. Even more so with the new Streaming API...
Family To Receive $1.5M+ In Vaccine-Autism Award 594
An anonymous reader, quoting from CBS News, writes "'The first court award in a vaccine-autism claim is a big one. CBS News has learned the family of Hannah Poling will receive more than $1.5 million for her life care, lost earnings, and pain and suffering for the first year alone. In addition to the first year, the family will receive more than $500,000 per year to pay for Hannah's care. Those familiar with the case believe the compensation could easily amount to $20 million over the child's lifetime. ... In acknowledging Hannah's injuries, the government said vaccines aggravated an unknown mitochondrial disorder Hannah had which didn't 'cause' her autism, but 'resulted' in it. It's unknown how many other children have similar undiagnosed mitochondrial disorders. All other autism 'test cases' have been defeated at trial. Approximately 4,800 are awaiting disposition in federal vaccine court.' How did this happen when all the scientific data points otherwise?"
Google Wave To Live On As 'Wave In a Box' 59
snydeq writes "Google Wave will morph into an application bundle for real-time collaboration, according to a blog post by Google Wave engineer Alex North. 'We will expand upon the 200K lines of code we've already open sourced (detailed at waveprotocol.org) to flesh out the existing example Wave server and Web client into a more complete application or "Wave in a Box,"' North said, adding that the future of the recently flat-lined Google service will be 'defined by your contributions. We hope this project will help the Wave developer community continue to grow and evolve,' he said."
Most Consumers Support Government Cyber-Spying 247
scurtis writes "Nearly two thirds of computer users globally believe that it is acceptable for their country to spy on other nations by hacking or installing malware, according to Sophos's mid-year 2010 Security Threat Report. And 23 percent claimed to support this action even during peacetime. Perhaps more surprisingly, 32 percent of respondents said that countries should also be allowed to plant malware and hack into private foreign companies in order to spy for economic advantage."
Comment Re:Slashdotted (Score 1) 158
500 KB Web fonts on a Slashdotted page... I guess one thing you can do now is replace that declaration with "font-face: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" everywhere.
China Pushes Real Name System For Online Games 115
oxide7 writes "Starting from August 1, Chinese Internet users will have to register using their real names for playing online games, China Daily reported on Saturday. The regulation, issued by the Ministry of Culture on June 22, is said to be part of a nationwide campaign to improve management of the virtual gaming industry and protect minors from unwholesome content. It applies to all multiplayer role-playing and social networking games."
Comment Re:Arrrrr! (Score 4, Informative) 260
Just for future reference,
33,000 USD of hard drives, currently at about 1.5 TiB for 80 USD, is 633,600 GiB.
633,600 GiB can store 158,400,000 songs, at 4 MiB apiece.
The second trial of Jammie Thomas awarded the RIAA 1,920,000 USD for 24 songs, which comes out to 80,000 USD apiece.
For 158,400,000 songs, the RIAA would be awarded 12,672,000,000,000 USD (12 trillion short scale). That's only a bit less than the national US debt, which is 13,208,593,598,669 USD (13 trillion short scale) as of this comment!
