Comment It's Not Important (Score 1) 86
Because countries who hate the United States would never throw things into space to try to harm Americans.
Submission + - The war on curly braces and angle brackets (stickyworld.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A short essay on how we're using preprocessors and programming languages which don't rely on curly braces or angle brackets for code blocks.
Submission + - Have e-books peaked?
An anonymous reader writes: At Rough Type, Nicholas Carr examines the surprisingly sharp drop in the growth rate for e-book sales. In the U.S., the biggest e-book market, annual sales growth dropped to just 5% in the first quarter of this year, according to the Association of American Publishers, while the worldwide e-book market actually shrank slightly, according to Nielsen. E-books now account for about 25% of total U.S. book sales — still a long way from the dominance most people expected. Carr speculates about various reasons e-books may be losing steam. He wonders in particular about "the possible link between the decline in dedicated e-readers (as multitasking tablets take over) and the softening of e-book sales. Are tablets less conducive to book buying and reading than e-readers were?" He suggests that the e-book may end up playing a role more like the audiobook — a complement to printed books rather than a replacement.
Comment Question #1 (Score 1) 72
Dilate for "yes" if you are not wanting us to not kill you.
Oh, you have more to say? We'll come back in 4 hours after you binary out a message.
Comment This Is News? (Score 1) 186
"New generation of products improve upon the old generation!"
And this story isn't even that good.
"Company A's next generation of products get close to being like Company B's products!"
And this story isn't even that good.
"Company A's next generation of products get close to being like Company B's products!"
Submission + - Metroid series turns 25
prod-you writes: August 6th marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of your favorite series, Metroid and its amazing heroine Samus Aran! As you may or may not know, this year is also the twenty-fifth anniversary of Nintendo's green-capped Hylian's series, The Legend of Zelda. Although great for Zelda, this also means that Nintendo has chosen to keep its focus on our elf-like hero rather than on our gal Sammy. This does not mean that Samus's birthday will go unnoticed; we and you the fans are celebrating Metroid's 25th birthday!
Comment Landlines (Score 1) 317
There's one easy way to solve this: stop using landlines, fire them all.
I guess that would keep Verizon/telcos from gouging customers with ridiculously overpriced, useless, decades-old technology.
I guess that would keep Verizon/telcos from gouging customers with ridiculously overpriced, useless, decades-old technology.
Submission + - How to get legit business email past spam filters? (prekindle.com) 1
davala writes: "I run a very small online business. Our receipts and some actual products are delivered to our customers via email. In the last few months we have been swamped by support calls from customers who are not receiving the goods from us. In almost every case we have found that our emails are going unceremoniously into their spam folders and understandably being overlooked. We have never sent a single shred of spam, nor marketed anything via email... yet we can no longer get through to recipients at AOL, Yahoo, and most corporations. Question to the gallery is, what can a small shop do to increase our chances of getting our legit emails through these aggressive spam filters?"
Comment Precedent (Score 1) 111
This kind of contest worked pretty darn well for Netflix.
Submission + - Earth May Once Had Two Moons (space.com)
AaronW writes: According to a story at space.com, Earth may once have had two moons. The smaller moon, estimated to be 750 miles (1200km) wide and only 4% of the mass of the larger moon, crashed into the far side of the larger moon which caused the features we see today on the moon. The surface of the far side of the moon is quite different than the side facing the earth, having a different composition and a much rougher terrain.
Submission + - Germany: Facebook's Facial Recognition is illegal (gizmodo.com)
fysdt writes: "Although we think it's generally a pretty nifty feature, valid concerns over the misuse of Facebook's auto-recognition tagging have lead Germany to ban it entirely. That's right—Facebook in its current state is now illegal. Deep Scheiße, Zuckerberg.
The German government—which possesses perhaps the world's most adamant privacy laws as a result of postwar abuse—considers The Book's facial recognition a violation of "the right to anonymity," The Atlantic reports."
The German government—which possesses perhaps the world's most adamant privacy laws as a result of postwar abuse—considers The Book's facial recognition a violation of "the right to anonymity," The Atlantic reports."
Submission + - Microsoft to Pay $200k Prize For New Security Tech (threatpost.com)
Trailrunner7 writes: In the face of mounting external pressure to begin paying bug bounties, Microsoft is instead launching a new program that will pay a $200,000 top prize to a security researcher who develops the most innovative defensive security technology. The program is designed to "inspire researchers to focus their talents on defensive technologies," the company said.
Known as the Blue Hat Prize, after the company's regular internal research conferences, the program will focus in its first year on getting researchers to design a novel runtime technology to defend against memory safety vulnerabilities. Microsoft security officials said that rather than paying for individual bugs the way that some other companies such as Google, Mozilla and others do, they wanted to encourage researchers to think about ways to defeat entire classes of bugs.
Known as the Blue Hat Prize, after the company's regular internal research conferences, the program will focus in its first year on getting researchers to design a novel runtime technology to defend against memory safety vulnerabilities. Microsoft security officials said that rather than paying for individual bugs the way that some other companies such as Google, Mozilla and others do, they wanted to encourage researchers to think about ways to defeat entire classes of bugs.
Submission + - US wants cybersecurity protection plan for cars (networkworld.com)
coondoggie writes: "As cars and other forms of transportation increasingly rely on online systems for everything from safety to onboard entertainment, the cybersecurity threat from those who would exploit such electronic control packages has also increased. That’s why the US Department of Transportation (DOT) today issued a Request For Information to the security industry to help it build a roadmap to build “motor vehicle safeguards against cybersecurity threats and assure the reliability and safety of automotive electronic control systems.”"
Comment Re:Still No MRU Tabs (Score 1) 103
That's not a reason to not use the browser though. If Chrome is superior except for one feature that can be fixed by an extension that takes 30 seconds to install once at the same time you install the browser, that's a really stupid reason to avoid the browser. Trying to add every single feature that every single person wants (and I don't consider this to be a necessary feature, especially considering there are better ways to switch tabs) just leads to a bloated browser, which Google wanted to avoid.
If you could buy a really great, affordable car, and the car's only downside was crummy factory tires, you buy the car and you put on some tires of your own choosing. You don't go buy a crappy car just because it has nice tires.
If you could buy a really great, affordable car, and the car's only downside was crummy factory tires, you buy the car and you put on some tires of your own choosing. You don't go buy a crappy car just because it has nice tires.
Comment Re:I could be wrong but... (Score 2) 91
A public wireless hotspot isn't meant to be inaccessible.
