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Comment Re:Jesus H. Christ, (Score 1) 277

As a high school football coach I actually would love to see all 22 and yes you can show all 22 on film at once. It is called a wide angle and we use it to break down high school games all the time. Very possible to fit everyone in. We don't care to see details such as the blood and sweat flying off of people. Looking like little ants would be just fine for the purpose.
The Internet

Bufferbloat — the Submarine That's Sinking the Net 525

gottabeme writes "Jim Gettys, one of the original X Window System developers and editor of the HTTP/1.1 spec, has posted a series of articles on his blog detailing his research on the relatively unknown problem of bufferbloat. Bufferbloat is affecting the entire Internet, slowly worsening as RAM prices drop and buffers enlarge, and is causing latency and jitter to spike, especially for home broadband users. Unchecked, this problem may continue to deteriorate the usability of interactive applications like VOIP and gaming, and being so widespread, will take years of engineering and education efforts to resolve. Being like 'frogs in heating water,' few people are even aware of the problem. Can bufferbloat be fixed before the Internet and 3G networks become nearly unusable for interactive apps?"
Security

ISP Owner Who Fought FBI Spying Freed From Gag Order 404

Tootech writes "So you wonder what happens when an ISP recieves a a so-called 'national security letter' from the FBI? Well, read this about an ISP owner's fight to not have to turn over everything and the sink to the FBI: 'The owner of an internet service provider who mounted a high-profile court challenge to a secret FBI records demand has finally been partially released from a 6-year-old gag order that forced him to keep his role in the case a secret from even his closest friends and family. He can now identify himself and discuss the case, although he still can't reveal what information the FBI sought. Nicholas Merrill, 37, was president of New York-based Calyx Internet Access when he received a so-called "national security letter" from the FBI in February 2004 demanding records of one of his customers and filed a lawsuit to challenge it.'"

Comment Some good concerns, but mostly FUD/ignorance (Score 3, Informative) 176

We're going through this same conversation at my employer (a higher-ed liberal arts university). This article came up yesterday in my team, and we had a bit of a discussion about it. Here's the email I sent out to the group about the article and Yale's decision. Hopefully this will help to clear up some of the misinformation in the article.

> Several members of the committee thought ITS had made the decision
> to move to Gmail too quickly and without University approval, Fischer
> said.

Well yah, of course that's going to be a problem.

> Google stores every piece of data in three centers randomly chosen
> from the many it operates worldwide in order to guard the company’s
> ability to recover lost information — but that also makes the data
> subject to the vagaries of foreign laws and governments"

Several other schools have fought this fight with Google and have gotten
them to agree that all of their data will stay in the country.

> Under the proposed switch, Yale might lose control over its data

No, No, No. Google makes it very clear to its customers that the data is
always "owned" by the customer.

> or could seem to endorse Google corporate policy and the large
> carbon footprint left by the company’s massive data centers

For many years, Google has been a pioneer in building efficient, green
datacenters. I guarantee you that proportionally-speaking, Yale's
segment of Google's network has a *much* smaller carbon footprint than
Yale's self-hosted system.

Social Networks

Jaron Lanier Rants Against the World of Web 2.0 231

hao3 writes "In his new book, You Are Not A Gadget, former Wired writer Jaron Lanier bemoans what the internet has become. 'It's early in the twenty-first century, and that means that these words will mostly be read by nonpersons,' it begins. The words will be 'minced into anatomized search engine keywords,' then 'copied millions of times by some algorithm somewhere designed to send an advertisement,' and then, in a final insult, 'scanned, rehashed, and misrepresented by crowds of quick and sloppy readers.' Lanier's conclusion: 'Real human eyes will read these words in only a tiny minority of the cases.' He goes on to criticise Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, open-source software and what he calls the 'hive mind.'"
Idle

Hand Written Clock 86

a3buster writes "This clock does not actually have a man inside, but a flatscreen that plays a 24-hour loop of this video by the artist watching his own clock somewhere and painstakingly erasing and re-writing each minute. This video was taken at Design Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach 2009."

Comment Re:i hate drupal so much (Score 2, Informative) 122

Drupal is just not ready for the mainstream.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/
http://www.theonion.com/
http://www.fastcompany.com/
http://www.wfp.org/

ORLY?

*cough*

I'll agree - Drupal does have a steep learning curve. With regards to theming/styling, though, it's no different than any other CMS. Designers will have to fight cross-browser css compatibility issues with whatever CMS or template engine they're using.

Comment Scratched a disc last night...shut the band down (Score 2, Interesting) 583

Funny, I just had this happen last night. The wife accidentally knocked it over when pulling out the drum kit as we were in the process of changing instruments for Rock Band 2. This caused it to start clicking like crazy. I tried to turn it off as soon as possible but it was too late! There goes my turn to dish out some serious Beastie Boys.
Biotech

Drug Halts Decline In Alzheimer's Patients 222

ljw1004 writes "Alzheimer's researchers are divided on whether the disease is caused by 'beta amyloid' (a peptide found in Alzheimer brains) or by 'tau protein' (normally used for cellular scaffolding, but can aggregate out of control and destroy neurons). Today in Chicago a new drug has been announced that stops tau aggregation and appears to have halted Alzheimer's-related decline in 300 clinical trial patients. The drug is known as 'rember.' Do you have friends or family who appear to be on the road to dementia? Here is an online questionnaire, part of one used in the clinical trial to diagnose dementia. (Disclosure: I made the online questionnaire, and my father is one of the scientists behind the drug.)"

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