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Comment It is a prank... (Score 2) 380

by jorlando (#36941946) Attached to: Study Compares IQ With Browser Choice
The "study" was realeased one week after the domain being created, by a gatech student. This guy must be ROFL.. look at this: Domain Name: aptiquant.com Registered at http://www.dynadot.com/ Registrant: Gill Web Services Tarandeep Gill 7867 138 St. Surrey, BC V3W7b5 Canada Administrative Contact: Gill Web Services Tarandeep Gill 7867 138 St. Surrey, BC V3W7b5 Canada taran@gatech.edu +1 7782429002 Technical Contact: Gill Web Services Tarandeep Gill 7867 138 St. Surrey, BC V3W7b5 Canada taran@gatech.edu +1 7782429002 Record expires on 2012/07/14 UTC Record created on 2011/07/14 UTC
Communications

Why Creators Should Never Read Their Forums 221

Posted by Soulskill from the lalala-i-can't-hear-you dept.
spidweb writes "One full-time Indie developer writes about why he never goes to online forums discussing his work and why he advises other creators to do the same. It's possible to learn valuable things, but the time and the stress just don't justify the effort. From the article, 'Forums contain a cacophony of people telling you to do diametrically opposite things, very loudly, often for bad reasons. There will be plenty of good ideas, but picking them out from the bad ones is unreliable and a lot of work. If you try to make too many people happy at once, you will drive yourself mad. You have to be very, very careful who you let into your head.'"
Crime

Justice Not As Blind As Previously Thought 256

Posted by samzenpus from the too-pretty-for-jail dept.
NotSoHeavyD3 writes "I doubt this is much of a surprise but apparently Cornell University did a study that seems to show you're more likely to get convicted if you're ugly. From the article: 'According to a Cornell University study, unattractive defendants are 22 percent more likely to be convicted than good-looking ones. And the unattractive also get slapped with harsher sentences — an average of 22 months longer in prison.'"
Image

Funeral Being Held Today For IE6 194

Posted by samzenpus from the good-riddance dept.
An anonymous reader writes "More than 100 people, many of them dressed in black, are expected to gather around a coffin Thursday to say goodbye to an old friend. The deceased? Internet Explorer 6. The aging Web browser, survived by its descendants Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8, is being eulogized at a tongue-in-cheek 'funeral' hosted by Aten Design Group, a design firm in Denver, Colorado."
Biotech

Printing Replacement Body Parts 101

Posted by kdawson from the portrait-mode dept.
Deep Penguin sends in a piece that appeared in The Economist a couple of weeks back about a developing technology to "print" body parts for transplant. "A US and an Australian company have developed the $200,000 machine, which works by depositing stem cells and a 'sugar-based hydrogel' scaffolding material. (The stem cells are harvested from a transplant patient's own fat and bone marrow, to avoid rejection down the line.) The companies are Organovo, from San Diego, specializing in regenerative medicine, and Invetech, an engineering and automation firm in Melbourne, Australia. The initial targets are skin, muscle, and 'short stretches of blood vessels,' which they hope to have available for human implantation within five years. Down the line, they expect the technology could even print directly into the body, bypassing the in-vitro portion of the current process."
Music

ASCAP Seeks Licensing Fees For Guitar Hero Arcade 146

Posted by Soulskill from the understanding-is-too-much-effort dept.
Self Bias Resistor writes "According to a post on the Arcade-Museum forums, ASCAP is demanding an annual $800 licensing fee from at least one operator of a Guitar Hero Arcade machine, citing ASCAP licensing regulations regarding jukeboxes. An ASCAP representative allegedly told the operator that she viewed the Guitar Hero machine as a jukebox of sorts. The operator told ASCAP to contact Raw Thrills, the company that sells the arcade units. The case is ongoing and GamePolitics is currently seeking clarification of the story from ASCAP."

Comment Re:I disagree with the military... I am brazilian. (Score 1) 462

by jorlando (#30063218) Attached to: Massive Power Outages In Brazil Caused By Hackers

No. There is no evidence of hackers attacking the grid. The only news regarding that hyppothesis appeared only after the CBS article.

By the way, yesterday (oct-10) around 10:30pm there was a new blackout affecting the brazilian south western states.

Again the same stations from Furnas (the electricity transmission company for the region) were affected. These stations use capacitor banks from ABB and are (were?) the only of this kind in the world for 735kV.

Comment I disagree with the military... I am brazilian... (Score 5, Insightful) 462

by jorlando (#30028776) Attached to: Massive Power Outages In Brazil Caused By Hackers

The blackout in 2005 was a human failure. One transmission line went down, the team recovering that line made a mistake and instead of activating the repaired line disabled the backup line. Result: 3 states withou electric power.

The blackout in 2007 was due a circuit breaker shutting down one line, the same happening after in the backup line, that could manage the excess load (this happened during peak hours, 5 p.m. during a working day).

Ok, these are official explanations and the blackouts may have been caused by evil hackers but, in this case, the brazilian government made an excelent job holding that information for years, leaking now thanks to an american former military that may have some vested interest spreading fear.

2 cents..
Image

Programming .NET 3.5 224

Posted by samzenpus
lamaditx writes "The world of the .NET framework is taken to the next level by the release of .NET 3.5. The intended audience of this book are experienced .NET programmers. There are no sections that tell you details about C#, SQL servers or anything like that. I don't recommend this book if you never worked on a .NET project and don't know how to set up a SQL database. You should be aware that the code is written in C#. You might use one of the software code converters if you prefer Visual Basic instead. I think the code is still readable even if you do not know C#. I appreciate the fact that the authors decided to use one language only because it keeps the book smaller. The authors assume you are using Visual Studio 2008. You don't necessarily need to update to 2008 if you are working with an older edition because you can use the free Express Edition to get started." Keep reading for the rest of Adrian's review.
The Internet

Submission + - A campaign to block Firefox users (whyfirefoxisblocked.com) 5

Submitted by rarwes
rarwes writes: A website is aiming at blocking Firefox users. This because a fraction of the Firefox users installed an Ad Blocker and thus stealing money from website owners that use ads. They recommend using IE, Opera or IE tab. From the site: Demographics have shown that not only are FireFox users a somewhat small percentage of the internet, they actually are even smaller in terms of online spending, therefore blocking FireFox seems to have only minimal financial drawbacks, whereas ending resource theft has tremendous financial rewards for honest, hard-working website owners and developers.

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