Comment Re:Alternate heat sources (Score 1) 553
Is that not quicklime? and does that not react explosively on contact with water?
Comment Re:How ironic it would be (Score 4, Insightful) 779
Only a very tiny percentage of Microsoft's customers read this site. I'd wager that a significantly larger percentage of diskeeper's do.
The Post-Bilski Era Gets Underway 94
bfwebster writes "A set of pharmaceutical process patents for 'evaluating and improving the safety of immunization schedules' (Classen v. Biogen et al.; see US Patents 6,420,139; 6,638,379; 5,728,385; 5,723,283) were held to be invalid due to unpatentability. The decision was appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, but was upheld with a terse citation to In re Bilski (which decision we discussed here). Here's the entire text of the appeals decision: 'In light of our decision in In re Bilski, 545 F.3d 943 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (en banc), we affirm the district court's grant of summary judgment that these claims are invalid under 35 U.S.C. 101. Dr. Classen's claims are neither "tied to a particular machine or apparatus" nor do they "transform a particular article into a different state or thing." Bilski, 545 F.3d at 954. Therefore we affirm.' It will be interesting to see what happens when these same standards start getting applied to software-related patents."
Comment Re:Security through obscurity (Score 1) 145
How so? Passwords are just obscure strings, as are public/private keys. If someone knows what the string is it's no longer secure. A OTP is just an obscure algorithm to generate passwords, etc, etc, etc...
Comment Re:Security through obscurity (Score 1) 145
Ah, once you go outside computers it comes down to semantics; what does "security" actually mean? It depends on the situation and implementation..
Comment Re:Security through obscurity (Score 1) 145
ALL security is through obscurity... It's just a matter of degree.
Comment CC (Score 1) 300
at least on par with what the credit card companies have done.
Jebus! Have you used their systems?! AVS and 3DSecure are NOT inspirational targets...
Pros:
- It's better than nothing
Cons:
- AVS: All it does is hash the numerics in the address into a string and compare
- AVS: It only works in the US and UK
- AVS: The CC companies take no responsibility for the accuracy of their information
- AVS: They absolve themselves of all responsibility anyway
- 3DS: With most systems you can reset the password using just the information on the card. Genius!
- 3DS: It's a major barrier to purchase; conversion rates plummet when 3d secure is enforced
You'd think a simple system that checks against a list of compromised card numbers would be straightforward enough, easier than checking ever changing addresses anyway.
If you've ever dealt with a CC company over a fraudulent card you might have got the strong impression they don't care, except in as much as they *really* want their chargeback fee from the retailer (the innocent party in 99.99% of cases). If you've dealt with them multiple times you may have found them so unhelpful you might even suspect that they *welcomed* CC fraud. After all most of it goes undetected, and when it doesn't they charge for the orginal transaction, the refund and then double for chargeback.
3D Secure (verified by visa etc) was meant to address the retailer's concerns about this by transferring some responsibility back to the CC issuer, but it makes the customer jump through so many hoops that it is disabled by most retailers in order for them to keep their business alive. Additionally the list of exemptions and pre-requisites for them taking liability is as long as your standard credit card terms and conditions, making it in practice completely useless.
Nothing to do with phones I know, but Credit Card companies are *not* aspirational technology leaders. Because of all politicians complete lack of understanding of technology they have managed to carve a privileged position where they profit from everyone and take no reponsibility themselves. If I'm leading the revolution they will be the first against the wall...
US Corps Want $1B From Gov't For Battery Factory 394
tristanreid writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that a consortium of 14 US technology companies will ask the Federal Government for up to $1 billion for a plant to make advanced battery technology, as a part of the broad fiscal stimulus package that Pres. Elect Obama is planning. The story quotes a report by Ralph Brodd, which suggests that while existing battery technology was developed in the US, the lead in development is now held in Asia. From the WSJ story: 'More than four dozen advanced battery factories are being built in China but none, currently, in the US.'"
Is MySQL's Community Eating the Company? 223
mjasay writes "Craigslist's Jeremy Zawodny reviews the progress of MySQL as a project, and discovers that through third-party forks and enhancements like Drizzle and OurDelta 'you can get a "better" MySQL than the one Sun/MySQL gives you today. For free.' Is this a good thing? On one hand it demonstrates the strong community around MySQL, but on the other, it could make it harder for Sun to fund core development on MySQL by diverting potential revenue from the core database project. Is this the fate of successful open-source companies? To become so successful as a community that they can't eke out a return as a company? If so, could anyone blame MySQL/Sun for creating its own proprietary fork in order to afford further core development?"
Governments Preparing To Bail Out DRAM Makers 494
An anonymous reader writes "DRAM makers are facing one of the worst downturns in their history and governments around the world are lining up to help companies through the mess. Taiwan, Germany and South Korea all appear poised to offer some assistance to their DRAM chip makers. The chip makers' problems are indicative of global woes. Easy lending terms and a bright view of the future prompted them to build too many new DRAM factories. Much of the new output was aimed at Microsoft's Windows Vista, which has higher memory requirements than XP."
Comment Re:I don't get it (Score 1) 907
The biggest stability problem I have with Vista is frickin firefox. 150mb RAM usage after 10 minutes, hanging processes when you close it down and just random crashes. Of course it *must* be my plugins, it's not possible that it's an overcoded piece of bloatware...
(Obviously I still consider it better than the alternatives or I wouldn't be using it, but I really don't understand why it's so hard for anyone to make a simple web browser. IE is IE, Chrome is buggy beyond belief and Opera's just irritatingly holier-than-thou)
Comment Re:Told you so (Score 4, Insightful) 486
Well with an infinite number of monkeys, sorry, science fiction writers, at least one of them's bound to get the correct answer to everything..
Indiana Bans Driver's License Smiles, For Security 459
Smelly Jeffrey writes "According to a recent article, Indiana BMV Communications Director Dennis Rosebrough states that applicants for a new or renewed operator's license or state identification card will no longer be allowed to smile and say cheese. Apparently new facial recognition software being employed by the state fails to function when the face is distorted by something as innocuous as smiling. Also on the list of taboos are hats, eyeglasses, and hair that hangs down over the face. The article fails to mention, however, the legality of beards, mustaches, and bushy eyebrows." Similar restrictions are in place for the Enhanced Driver License (which serves as a sort of limited passport) implemented by the state of Washington, among others.
Comment Re:Stop him! (Score 1) 279
Or they would do if they were actually usable... Perhaps they work when you're connected to Internet2 or GEANT but out here in the real world of 4k/256 ADSL they suck ass.
Windows Drops Below 90% Market Share 595
ozmanjusri writes "Online market share of the dominant Windows operating system has taken its biggest monthly fall in years to drop below 90%, according to Net Applications Inc. Computerworld reports that Microsoft's flagship product has been steadily losing ground to Mac OS X and Linux, and is at its lowest ebb in the market since 1995. 'Mac OS X... [ended] the month at 8.9%. November was the third month running that Apple's operating system remained above 8%.' The stats show that while some customers are 'upgrading' from XP to Vista, many are jumping ship to Apple, while Linux is also steadily gaining ground. A Net Applications executive suggests the slide may be caused by many of the same factors that caused the fall in Internet Explorer use. 'The more home users who are online, using Macs and Firefox and Safari, the more those shares go up,' he said. November has more weekend days, as well Thanksgiving in the US, a result that emphasizes the importance of corporate sales to Microsoft."
