Comment Re:My Take (Score 2) 181
They'll be idiot savants, great at one specific thing to the point of being better than any human, but a complete idiot at everything else.
So basically a PhD then?
Submission + - Google announces Inbox, a new take on email organization (blogspot.com)
Z80xxc! writes: The Gmail team announced Inbox this morning, a new way to manage email. Inbox is email, but organizes it differently. Messages are grouped into "bundles" of similar types, "highlights" pull out and display key information from messages, and messages can be "snoozed" to come back later as a reminder. Inbox is invite-only right now, and you can email inbox@google.com to request an invite.
Comment CloudFlare (Score 3, Informative) 115
The host is important and has been covered extensively, but you should also put your site behind CloudFlare. They'll protect against DDOS attacks, and it makes it harder for the parodied party to determine who the host even is if the entire site is behind CloudFlare. They have a long history of not taking things down just because somebody finds it objectionable. And, you get free SSL with CloudFlare too.
Comment Re:BUY NOW!!!! (Score 1) 67
Considering that it used to cost $20/month to use SSL on CloudFlare and the whole point of this announcement was that now it costs $0/month to use SSL on CloudFlare... no. I'm a happy CloudFlare "customer" but I've never paid them a cent in my life.
Comment Re:In the Market (Score 3, Informative) 67
Indeed. I run a couple websites that see a decent amount of traffic. CloudFlare up front, Webfaction on the backend. Works quite well overall. Very speedy load times and easy to set up. I'm looking forward to enabling SSL for all my sites.
I have had some troubles getting the right IP addresses into logs and applications though... WebFaction's nginx reverse proxy adds an X-FORWARDED-FOR header, which replaces that sent by CloudFlare with the CloudFlare IP... so you end up not getting the right IP returned.
Comment Re:In the Market (Score 5, Informative) 67
CloudFlare isn't a host, it's a sort of advanced CDN with extra features. You still need to have the website hosted on another server somewhere. Their website explains how it works better than I can, so you might as well read it there: https://www.cloudflare.com/ove...
Submission + - CloudFlare announces free SSL support for all customers (cloudflare.com)
Z80xxc! writes: CloudFlare, a cloud service that sits between websites and the internet to provide a CDN, DDOS and other attack prevention, speed optimization, and other services announced today that SSL will now be supported for all customers, including free customers. This will add SSL support to approximately 2 million previously unprotected websites. Previously SSL was only available to customers paying at least $20/month for a "Pro" plan or higher.
Browsers connect to CloudFlare's servers and receive a certificate provided by CloudFlare. CloudFlare then connects to the website's server to retrieve the content, serving as a sort of reverse proxy. Different security levels allow CloudFlare to connect to the website host using no encryption, a self-signed certificate, or a verified certificate, depending on the administrator's preferences. CloudFlare's servers will use SNI for free accounts, which is unsported for IE on Windows XP and older, and Android Browser on Android 2.2 and older.
Browsers connect to CloudFlare's servers and receive a certificate provided by CloudFlare. CloudFlare then connects to the website's server to retrieve the content, serving as a sort of reverse proxy. Different security levels allow CloudFlare to connect to the website host using no encryption, a self-signed certificate, or a verified certificate, depending on the administrator's preferences. CloudFlare's servers will use SNI for free accounts, which is unsported for IE on Windows XP and older, and Android Browser on Android 2.2 and older.
Submission + - Microsoft demos real-time translation over Skype (technet.com)
Z80xxc! writes: Today at the first annual Code Conference, Microsoft demonstrated its new real-time translation in Skype publicly for the first time. Gurdeep Pall, Microsoft's VP of Skype and Lync, compares the technology to Star Trek's Universal Translator. During the demonstration, Pall converses in English with a coworker in Germany who is speaking German.
Skype Translator results from decades of work by the industry, years of work by our researchers, and now is being developed jointly by the Skype and Microsoft Translator teams. The demo showed near real-time audio translation from English to German and vice versa, combining Skype voice and IM technologies with Microsoft Translator, and neural network-based speech recognition.
Comment Code monkey like tab AND mountain dew (Score 1) 169
So basically, they discovered that humans aren't the only animals that enjoy variety in their diet?
Submission + - Amazon reveals "Prime Air", their plans for 30-minute deliveries by drone (cbsnews.com)
Z80xxc! writes: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed during a CBS 60 Minutes interview that the company is working on a service called "Prime Air" to deliver packages by autonomous octocopter drones within 30 minutes of hitting the "buy" button. The plan still requires more testing and FAA approval, but Bezos predicts it'll be available to the public in the next 4-5 years.
With a lot of backlash against drones, and some towns even offering bounties to shoot them down, will this technology ever take off, or is this just another one of Amazon's eccentric CEO's fantastical flight ideas ?
Submission + - Federally funded research to be publicly available within 1 year of publication (whitehouse.gov)
Z80xxc! writes: The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy announced a "policy memorandum" today requiring any federal agency with over $100 million in R&D expenditures each year to develop plans for making all research funded by that agency freely available to the public within one year of publication in any peer-reviewed scholarly journal. The full memorandum is available on the White House website. It appears that this policy would not only apply to federal agencies conducting research, but also to any university, private corporation, or other entity conducting research that arises from federal funding. For those in academia and the public at large, this is a huge step towards free open access to publicly funded research.
Submission + - Opera switching to WebKit rendering engine (opera.com)
Z80xxc! writes: The creators of Opera announced today that the browser now has over 300 million users — and will therefore be switching to webkit.
To provide a leading browser on Android and iOS, this year Opera will make a gradual transition to the WebKit engine, as well as Chromium, for most of its upcoming versions of browsers for smartphones and computers.
With Opera moving to webkit, there will now be only three major web rendering engines: IE's Trident, Mozilla's Gecko, and WebKit — used by Google Chrome and Apple Safari already. What will this mean for the future of compatibility and web standards?
Comment Re:Really? (Score 1) 526
The touch screen is a compromise that doesn't work as well as a keyboard, or a mouse, but is a passable replacement for either or both in those times you don't have them. It is sure as hell not a compliment to them, because if you have a keyboard and mouse, you never use the touch screen.
A statement that is directly refuted by the experience of the author and others who've actually used modern touch devices. Also, isn't half the point of having a touch/type/mouse device that you can also use the touchscreen in those situations where using a keyboard or mouse is impractical, but have them available for when they are convenient?
Comment Re:Really? (Score 1) 526
As the guy below me says: you're still not getting it. The article isn't saying that people poke at a vertical surface all stupid day. It's saying that people type on a keyboard all day, and occasionally reach up to poke at something when it's convenient. (And, when it's not convenient to type, they can poke some more. And then go right back to typing when it's more convenient to do so again.)
You can hate on it all you want, and say that the base technology has been around a long time, but until you actually use the new technology for more than a few hours, it would seem that your opinion is based entirely on speculation and outdated experience. A 1980's touch screen is not the same as a 2012 touch screen.
Comment Re:Before the eight-hate arrives, I just want to s (Score 2, Insightful) 526
So you're suggesting that we should never have transitioned from horses and buggies to motor cars, because driving a car takes some getting used to? The fact of the matter is that if you haven't used something, you can't make an informed opinion of it. You can have an opinion, and you're welcome to have that opinion, but it won't be an informed opinion.
