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Comment Spelling, no, handwriting, absolutely (Score 1) 494

My cursive has gone to crap. Well, crappier crap. I've always been a typing guy. Cursive and me are archenemies. Not even frenemies, just all-out hate each other.

A few years of early 20s partying too much, not sleeping enough and I saw my spelling skills go downhill a bit ... picked up books and started reading again, problem solved.

Social Networks

Submission + - App Developers Stung by Twitter's DOS Woes (pcworld.com)

BadERA (Andrew Badera) writes: "http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/169871/app_developers_stung_by_twitters_dos_woes.html For two weeks now Twitter has pained we third-party API developers with unannounced, breaking security patches last week, and this week's fumbled handling of a DDoS attack. Twitter dealt with the technical issues first — which I wholly agree with — then started sending memos to CNN before they ever bothered to communicate with the developer list. Developers continue to experience throttling, despite whitelisted status, leaving many questions unanswered, while Twitter's platform head, Ryan Sarver, tweets about himself, his gf and the team heading out for sushi."

Comment Re:Militarization? (Score 1) 83

Depends on the neighborhood. Two different occasions in Rochester, NY, within two weeks of my moving out, people were killed within eyesight of my former homes. One was a robbery/murder, the other was a gangland initiation, totally random killing of a guy riding his bike on a bridge over the Lower Falls of the Genesee River. The latter neighborhood, my apartment was up on a hill, and some weeks, in the summer, it was very much like being in a war zone -- multiple shots, or bursts of shots, from multiple directions, throughout the night, many nights in a row. There was a mob beating of a woman around the same period. There was a drug raid across the street a few weeks previous. There were open-air drug markets on either side of my neighborhood, and all the accompanying violence.

My favorite recollection here was the time I heard what sounded like two people with pistols shooting at one another, because of the rapidity and succession of the shots. Turns out it was two teens shooting at an old lady after a botched robbery attempt, and despite 10-12 shots fired, neither one managed to hit her.

Comment 4 days, 3 nights (Score 1) 605

Hallucinations? Oh yeah. Starting around day #3. Not like "there's a big blue bunny on my couch," but shadows were moving, sense of motion in my peripheral vision especially, auditory hallucinations, the feeling that someone else was in the room when they weren't. I ended up playing Yahoo! Euchre on autopilot for something like 24 hours towards the end. I didn't consciously know what card I was going to play, or why, but my hand moved the mouse and I played it, and played about the same level as I always did at that time. (I had been playing a lot of Euchre that year.)

Comment !SNOWBOUND (Score 1) 429

I enjoy sitting at home, enjoying a single malt, catching up on movies and books ... but SNOWBOUND? 4WD, 9" of clearance and knobby tires baby, snow doesn't bother me in the least.

Worms

Submission + - SPAM: Why Old SQL Worms Won't Die

narramissic writes: "In a recent ITworld article, Security researcher Brent Huston ponders how it is that versions of SQL worms dating back to 2002 represent nearly 70% of all malicious traffic on the Internet today. From the article:

I have made a few attempts to backtrack hosts that perform the scans and at first blush many show the signs of common botnet infections. Most are not running exposed SQL themselves, so that means that the code has likely been implemented into many bot-net exploitation frameworks. Perhaps the bot masters have the idea that when they infiltrate a commercial network, the SQL exploits will be available and useful to them? My assessment team says this is pretty true. Even today, they find blank "sa" passwords and other age-old SQL issues inside major corporate clients. So perhaps, that is why these old exploits continue to thrive.
"

Link to Original Source
Linux Business

Submission + - Source Control Appliance

BadERA writes: "I'm a one-man development shop with a variety of small-business customers, and with the occasional additional consultant or contractor involved. I'd like to deploy a Linux-driven source control appliance that lives on my network, can be exposed through my firewall, but could also theoretically be unplugged and quickly installed, no fuss, at a client location, a meeting or conference, a work area, etc. etc. I'm thinking something centered around Mini-ITX, in a case just big enough to hold 2 3.5" (100gb?) SATA drives in a RAID configuration for redundancy; some form of external backup is probably required too. Mini-ATX boards and cases seem to be too large a profile to be ideal, but I'd love to be proven wrong on that point.

I'm hoping the Slashdot community would have input to offer on hardware configurations, distros, source control packages (something with robust Visual Studio plug-ins would be key; or, something I can write a robust plug-in for. I'd been thinking Subversion, but I don't seem to see a lot of VS2005 friendliness there.)"
Software

Submission + - Simulation of 9/11 attacks back building failure. (smh.com.au)

BlacKSacrificE writes: "Sydney Morning Herald reports lads at the Purdue University have created a computer simulation of the aircraft hitting that shows what caused the towers to collapse allegedly. While they are yet to address most of the conspiracy theories claims around the event regarding melting temperatures of steel, pools of thermite-like molten material pouring out of the buildings, and reports of midgets in clown uniforms with explosive squibs, it apparently backs the idea that all the central support beams were taken out, causing the collapse. A video of the simulation is not available online as far as i can find, but I would love to see it nonetheless."
Republicans

Submission + - Is Vice President's Office Above The Law? (washingtonpost.com)

Frosty Piss writes: "US Vice President Dick Cheney's office has refused to comply with an executive order governing the handling of classified information for the past four years and recently tried to abolish the office that sought to enforce those rules, according to documents released by a congressional committee yesterday. Since 2003, the vice president's staff has not cooperated with an office at the National Archives and Records Administration charged with making sure the executive branch protects classified information. Cheney aides have not filed reports on their possession of classified data and at one point blocked an inspection of their office. After the Archives office pressed the matter, the documents say, Cheney's staff this year proposed eliminating it."
Biotech

Submission + - Hitachi develops 'brain-machine interface' (washingtonpost.com)

Frosty Piss writes: "A new technology from Hitachi could let you control electronic devices without lifting a finger simply by reading brain activity. Underlying Hitachi's brain-machine interface is a technology called optical topography, which sends a small amount of infrared light through the brain's surface to map out changes in blood flow. Hitachi's scientists are set to develop a brain TV remote controller letting users turn a TV on and off or switch channels by only thinking. A key advantage to Hitachi's technology is that sensors don't have to physically enter the brain."

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