dynchaw - Slashdot User

Facebook To Own the Word "Face" 311

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday November 24, 2010 @07:04PM from the what's-in-a-word dept.

Dthief writes "The US Patent And Trademark Office has sent Facebook a Notice of Allowance, which means it will grant the 'Face' trademark to the popular social networking site. Facebook now has three months to pay an issue fee before they officially own the word. From the article: 'For all intents and purposes today's status update bodes well for Facebook's hold over 'face' usages in 'Telecommunication services, namely, providing online chat rooms and electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among computer users in the field of general interest and concerning social and entertainment subject matter, none primarily featuring or relating to motoring or to cars.''"

Russian Scholar Warns Of US Climate Change Weapon 415

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday August 18, 2010 @11:11AM from the hurricane-cannon dept.

According to Russian political scientist, and conspiracy aficionado Andrei Areshev the high heat, and poor crop yields of Russia, and other Central Asian countries may be the result of a climate weapon created by the US military. From the article: "... Areshev voiced suspicions about the High-Frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP), funded by the US Defense Department and the University of Alaska. HAARP, which has long been the target of conspiracy theorists, analyzes the ionosphere and seeks to develop technologies to improve radio communications, surveillance, and missile detection. Areshev writes, however, that its true aim is to create new weapons of mass destruction 'in order to destabilize environmental and agricultural systems in local countries.'"

Comment They're kids .. (Score 0, Redundant) 663

by dynchaw on Sunday August 15, 2010 @04:37PM (#33258468) Attached to: 'Wi-Fi Illness' Spreads To Ontario Public Schools

.. and they don't want to goto school.

Nuclear Power Could See a Revival 415

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday July 14, 2010 @03:34AM from the comforting-bremsstrahlung-glow dept.

shmG writes "As the US moves to reduce dependence on oil, the nuclear industry is looking to expand, with new designs making their way through the regulatory process. No less than three new configurations for nuclear power are being considered for licensing by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The first of them could be generating power in Georgia by 2016."

Coming Soon, Web Ads Tailored To Your Zip+4 185

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday June 23, 2010 @08:17AM from the knows-when-you're-awake dept.

On the heels of Apple's intention to collect and sell detailed location data comes word that Juniper is putting together technology that will allow any ISP to present you to advertisers by your Zip+4. An anonymous reader sends this snip from Wired: "Your Internet service provider knows where you live, and soon, it will have a way to sell your zip code to advertisers so they can target ads by neighborhood. If your local pizza joint wants to find you, they will have a new way to do that. National advertisers will be able to market directly to neighborhoods with like characteristics across the whole country using demographic data they've been gathering for decades. ... Juniper Networks, which sells routers to ISPs, plans to start selling them add-on technology from digital marketer Feeva that affixes a tag inside the HTTP header, consisting of each user's 'zip+4' — a nine-digit zipcode that offers more accuracy than five-digit codes. Juniper hopes to sell the software to ISPs starting this summer, having announced a partnership with Feeva earlier this year."

Adobe (Temporarily?) Kills 64-Bit Flash For Linux 272

Posted by Soulskill on Friday June 11, 2010 @10:32AM from the how-rude dept.

An anonymous reader writes "It seems that with the release of the 10.1 security patches, Adobe has, at least temporarily, killed 64-bit Flash for Linux. The statement says: 'The Flash Player 10.1 64-bit Linux beta is closed. We remain committed to delivering 64-bit support in a future release of Flash Player. No further information is available at this time. Please feel free to continue your discussions on the Flash Player 10.1 desktop forums.' The 64-bit forum has been set to read-only."

Comment Forget the higher level languages (Score 1) 407

by dynchaw on Sunday March 14, 2010 @09:58PM (#31477150) Attached to: Good Language Choice For School Programming Test?

If you want to give these kids a solid foundation to build on that will instill good habits and understanding of how computers work - C.

Java runs on top of an engine written in C - same with Python. They're great for doing that they do which is providing a massive library to take out all the menial tasks, but those menial tasks are the ones that teach people how everything works in the first place. How do they become a menial task if no one ever learned they were there?

Do we teach calculus without first teaching numbers and then general addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, etc etc etc

I have spent years beating the bad habits of Java out of programmers. Garbage collection is all nice and wonderful but it prevents programmers from having to think about memory at all. Taking that Java programmer and trying to get them to write even simple C/C++ code or even something as basic as assembler is damn hard! Everything they have learned has to be re-grounded. It's like boot camp - break them down to so they can be built up into something useful.

It's easy to teach someone who knows C how to write C++, Java, Python, or the zillion of other languages out there.

Aussie Attorney General Says Gamers Are Scarier Than Biker Gangs 409

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday February 16, 2010 @02:31PM from the well-perhaps-in-some-senses dept.

Sasayaki writes "South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson claims, in an interview with Good Game, that gamers were more of a threat to his family than biker gangs. This is the man who has been the biggest opponent to Australia receiving an R18+ rating for video games and who has the power to veto any such law introducing it."

Microsoft Says Google Chrome Frame Makes IE Less Secure 459

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday September 24, 2009 @08:59AM from the less-secure-than-what-exactly dept.

Mark writes "The release of Google Chrome Frame, a new open source plugin that injects Chrome's renderer and JavaScript engine into Microsoft's browser, earlier this week had many web developers happily dancing long through the night. Finally, someone had found a way to get Internet Explorer users up to speed on the Web. Microsoft, on the other hand, is warning IE users that it does not recommend installing the plugin. What does the company have against the plugin? It makes Internet Explorer less secure. 'With Internet Explorer 8, we made significant advancements and updates to make the browser safer for our customers,' a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. 'Given the security issues with plugins in general and Google Chrome in particular, Google Chrome Frame running as a plugin has doubled the attack area for malware and malicious scripts. This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families take.'"

Comment Re:Wrong agency; should have claimed NSA (Score 1) 24

by dynchaw on Wednesday August 26, 2009 @04:18AM (#29198065) Attached to: Man Claims to be In the CIA to Get Out Of Speeding Ticket

Any of the contact addresses here:

http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/contacts/index.shtml

AT&T Blocks Part of 4chan 342

Posted by timothy on Monday July 27, 2009 @02:00AM from the do-you-hear-that-tremendous-whining-noise? dept.

holdenkarau writes "Several news sources (Mashable, The Inquistr, etc.) are reporting that AT&T is blocking img.4chan.org in the southern United States. That server is used for the infamous /b/ board (the home of anonymous). TechCrunch calls the decision to block 4chan 'stupid,' noting that they may have 'opened perhaps the most vindictive, messy can of worms.' The Inquisitr suggests that 'The global internet censorship debate landed in the home of the free.' moot (who runs 4chan) asks users to call AT&T, while some others suggest more drastic action (like cutting AT&T fiber)." Update: 07/27 09:23 GMT by T : Readers' comments below suggest that a) the purpose of the block was to curtail the effects of a serious DDoS attack and b) that the block has now been lifted, at least for some regions.

Comment Re:Much ado about nothing (Score 1) 288

by dynchaw on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @02:37AM (#28449727) Attached to: Has Google Broken JavaScript Spam Munging?

My gmail account has had 2 spams make it to my inbox in the last 6 months (probably longer) of the 20-50 spams a day the account receives. I have never published the address and have only even given it out to friends and family but it has received spam since the day I opened it. I also don't have any other email addresses forward to it. Very effective for me.

Pixar's Next Three Films Will Be Sequels 379

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @08:03PM from the low-hanging-fruit-is-the-first-to-rot dept.

brumgrunt writes "Should we be worried? As Pixar, with Up, once more proves itself to be home to some of the most original and daring blockbusters on the planet, the news that its next three films are likely to be sequels — with the confirmation of Monsters, Inc. 2 — gives cause for concern. Are commercial pressures catching up with one of our most inventive movie companies?"

Vista Post-SP2 Is the Safest OS On the Planet 1010

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday April 14, 2009 @05:18PM from the color-me-skeptical dept.

pkluss noted Kevin Turner, COO of Microsoft making the proclamation that "Vista today, post-Service Pack 2, which is now in the marketplace, is the safest, most reliable OS we've ever built. It's also the most secure OS on the planet, including Linux and open source and Apple Leopard. It's the safest and most secure OS on the planet today."

One Broken Router Takes Out Half the Internet? 412

Posted by kdawson on Monday February 16, 2009 @07:32PM from the brain-gone-punky dept.

Silent Stephus writes "I work for a smallish hosting provider, and this morning we experienced a networking event with one of our upstreams. What is interesting about this, is it's being caused by a mis-configured router in Europe — and it appears to be affecting a significant portion of the transit providers across the Internet. In other words, a single mis-configured router is apparently able to cause a DOS for a huge chunk of the Net. And people don't believe me when I tell them all this new-fangled technology is held together by duct-tape and baling wire!"

Slashdot Top Deals