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Submission + - FCC Misplaced Around 600,000 Net Neutrality Comments

Submitted by Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: FCC States It Misplaced Around 600,000 Net Neutrality Comments

Just as net neutrality opponents were celebrating the claim that their outrage-o-matic form letter campaigns resulted in more FCC-filed comments than neutrality supporters, the FCC has announced that it somehow managed to lose roughly 600,000 net neutrality comments during processing. According to a blog post by the FCC, the agency says that the comments were misplaced due to the agency's "18-year-old Electronic Comment Filing system (ECFS)."

Submission + - Donald Knuth Worried About the "Dumbing Down" of Computer Science History (acm.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Thomas Haigh, writing for Communications of the ACM, has an in-depth column about Donald Knuth and the history of computer science. It's centered on a video of Knuth giving a lecture at Stanford earlier this year, in which he sadly recounts how we're doing a poor job of capturing the development of computer science, which obscures vital experience in discovering new concepts and overcoming new obstacles. Haigh disagrees with Knuth, and explains why: "Distinguished computer scientists are prone to blur their own discipline, and in particular few dozen elite programs, with the much broader field of computing. The tools and ideas produced by computer scientists underpin all areas of IT and make possible the work carried out by network technicians, business analysts, help desk workers, and Excel programmers. That does not make those workers computer scientists. ... Computing is much bigger than computer science, and so the history of computing is much bigger than the history of computer science. Yet Knuth treated Campbell-Kelly's book on the business history of the software industry (accurately subtitled 'a history of the software industry') and all the rest of the history of computing as part of 'the history of computer science.'"

Submission + - Crowds Flock to "The Interview": Free As In Speech

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: Theatres showing "The Interview" on Christmas were rewarded with sell-out crowds. While reviews of the comedy have been mixed, many movie-goers expressed solidarity with the sentiment expressed by one, "I wanted to support the U.S." Meanwhile, some reviewers have found the film tedious, with "...forced comedy that turns you off." Another opined, "It was more serious, the satire, than I was expecting," and, ""There's a message for America in there too about America's foreign policy." Then, of course, there's the North Korean take, that it is an "act of war."

Submission + - Federal Judge: Facebook Must Face Suit for Scanning Messages

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: U.S. District Court Judge Phyllis Hamilton, on Tuesday, denied Facebook's bid to dismiss a class-action lawsuit against the social media giant, for violating users' privacy through the scanning of message content. In her rejection of Facebook's argument, the judge said the firm had, "...not offered a sufficient explanation of how the challenged practice falls within the ordinary course of its business."

Comment So, the sum of humanity's problems ... (Score 4, Insightful) 208

by Rambo Tribble (#48666563) Attached to: The World Is Not Falling Apart
... are social? Global warming, over-population, every ecosystem on the planet in decline, ravaged fish stocks, depleted soils, widespread environmental contamination, a loss of green spaces, habitat and species, and on, and on don't reflect on the world's condition? Let the rainbows and unicorns run wild!

Submission + - Boeing and Blackberry Make Self-Destructing Phone 1

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: It sounds like a "Mission Impossible" scenario, but aerospace company Boeing is teaming with Canadian phone maker Blackberry to produce an ultra-secure mobile phone that "self-destructs". The phone uses encryption on calls and is aimed to serve the high-security needs of government and industry. As Blackberry CEO, John Chen, said, "We're pleased to announce that Boeing is collaborating with BlackBerry to provide a secure mobile solution for Android devices utilizing our BES 12 platform. That, by the way, is all they allow me to say."

No word yet if you'll need the services of the bomb squad when you go over your minutes.

Submission + - Geoengineering Climate Cooling With Microbubbles

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: Scientists from the University of Leeds have proposed that brighter ships' wakes, created by reducing their component bubbles' sizes, could increase their reflectivity and produce a cooling effect on the climate. The technology is touted as being available and simple, but side-effects might include such things as wetter conditions in some regions. Still, compared to many speculative geoengineering projects, "The one advantage about this technology — of trying to generate these tiny 'micro-bubbles' — is that the technology does already exist," according to Leeds' Prof Piers Forster.

Submission + - Terrestrial Gamma Ray Bursts Very Common

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: It was long thought that gamma ray bursts were the exclusive province of deep space sources. More recently it was found that storms could produce such emissions, but such occurrences were thought rare. Now, data from NASA's Fermi satellite suggest such events happen over a thousand times a day. Per Prof. Joseph Dwyer, from the University of New Hampshire, "These are big, monster bursts of gamma rays, and one would think these must be monster storms producing them. But that's not the case. Even boring-looking, garden-variety, little storms can produce these."

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