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Comment Re:Great more students to filter out as a Professo (Score 1) 989

If any student made it that far and has any interest in working on a university research project you can safely assume that they can train -- or have already trained -- themselves beyond their high school's minimal curriculum. The crappier the school, the more likely this is the case, has been my experience coming from the student's side.
Security

Stand-Alone Antivirus Software? 159

An anonymous reader writes "I work for a company that repairs specialty devices that have an embedded Mini-ATX motherboard without a CD-ROM drive and run Windows XP Home. And while the USB flash drives we insert into them have a physical write-protect tab, we still encounter a (rather annoying) display dialog from malware/viruses to remove the write-protect so the malware can infect the flash drive. We don't remove the write-protect, obviously, but would like to offer our customers the option of removing the malware/virus without having to install any software. We would rather not install/uninstall antivirus software even for one-time use, due to various licensing issues, nor do we want to connect to the Internet to use web-based online scanners. Is there any stand-alone anti-virus/anti-malware software for Windows that can be run directly from the write-protected flash drive itself?"

Comment Re:Parents are the Biggest Factor (Score 3, Insightful) 156

Another thing parents can do to get their kids started on engineering: Science fiction. Thanks to science fiction I developed an interest in IT plus marketable skills in the same despite having little natural aptitude for it. Bruce Coville's AI gang trilogy led me to start learning Perl at age ten (admittedly it fell by the wayside until age 16, but still.)
Science

Submission + - How To Destroy A Black Hole (technologyreview.com) 1

KentuckyFC writes: The critical concept that makes a Black Hole black is the event horizon: a theoretical boundary in space through which light and other objects can pass in one direction but not the other. Since light cannot escape the event horizon, it must be black. The event horizon is a nuisance to astrophysicists because it hides the interesting new physics that must go on inside a black hole. What they would like is a way to get rid of the event horizon so that they can see what goes on behind it. It turns out that just such a thing may be possible, say physicists. According to the mathematics of general relativity, the event horizon should disappear if a black hole were fed enough charge and angular momentum relative to its mass. However the calculations are so fiendish that nobody knows whether the black hole would shed this extra angular momentum and charge before it could settle into a stable 'naked' state. However, the possibility that the event horizon could be destroyed raises the question of what astrophysicists would see behind this veil. According to some, black holes are regions of spacetime with infinite curvature called singularities. Many believe that 'naked' singularites cannot exist in nature. And yet there are enough questions marks to suggest that this mystery is far from settled.
The Internet

Submission + - NY goes after Tagged.com in child porn case (skunkpost.com)

crimeandpunishment writes: The New York attorney general's office says child pornography remained on the social networking site Tagged.com for nearly two months after it was reported to the site's administrators....and says it will sue the site if the situation isn't resolved within five days. The AG's office says one slideshow that stayed on the site showed sexual acts involving children who appeared to be as young as five.

Submission + - Finland to legalize use of unsecured WiFi (yle.fi)

Apotekaren writes: The Finnish Ministry of Justice has started preparing changes to the current law that criminalizes using unsecured wireless hot spots. The reasoning is the impossibility of tracking unlawful use, the ease of securing networks and the lack of real damage done by this this activity. It has also been proven hard for a user to know if an unsecured network is intended for public use or not. The increased ubiquity of legal open networks in parks, airports and other public places has also influenced this move by the Ministry of Justice. The Ministry has stated that the legal rights of the owner of the network have to be protected in the case of misuse.
Googles (poorly) translated version here.

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