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Submission + - Microsoft Exec: iOS is "boring". Android is a "mess". (businessweek.com)

UnknowingFool writes: While not as sensational as Ballmer's bold prediction that the iPhone would never get any significant marketshare. MS Exec Terry Myerson, VP of the Windows Phone division, said at a conference in New York that iOS was "boring" with its buttons lacking information or flexibility. Android is a "mess" with the many versions. Of course MS would like to see more consumers buy their offering which share of the market is estimated to be 2.6% behind Android (70%), iOS (21%), and Blackberry (3.2%).

Submission + - Linode Hacked Through ColdFusion Zero Day

Trailrunner7 writes: The attackers who compromised Web hosting provider Linode used a zero day vulnerability in Adobe ColdFusion and were able to access the company's database, source code and customers' credit card numbers and passwords. The company said that the customer credit card numbers were encrypted, as were the passwords, but it forced a system-wide password reset after the attack was discovered.

The attack on Linode was described by the company on Monday, a few days after it said that one of its customers was compromised. The details of the attack are quite similar to other attacks that have resulted in password leaks and database breaches, aside from the use of the ColdFusion zero day. Many of these operations tend to be executed through the use of stolen or compromised credentials or a known bug in one of the targeted systems.

Feed Schneier: Initial Thoughts on the Boston Bombings (schneier.com)

I rewrote my "refuse to be terrorized" essay for the Atlantic. David Rothkoph (author of the great book Power, Inc.) wrote something similar, and so did John Cole. It's interesting to see how much more resonance this idea has today than it did a dozen years ago. If other people have written similar essays, please post links in the comments....

Submission + - Wayland/Weston 1.1 Officially Released (paritynews.com)

hypnosec writes: Wayland/Weston 1.1 have been officially released on Monday. Some of the new features in the Wayland/Weston 1.1 release include Raspberry Pi back-end that would allow Weston to work with the graphics driver stack of the credit card-sized computer; a Pixman renderer back-end allowing Wayland's reference compositor to work with software-based "pixel manipulation" in lieu of explicit hardware support; a new back-end that supports Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Protocol; touch-screen calibration support; EGL buffer-age extension support through KMS back-end; and improved documentation among others.

Submission + - Moore's Law and the Origin of Life 1

DoctorBit writes: MIT Technology Review is running a story about an arXiv paper in which geneticists Alexei A. Sharov and Richard Gordon propose that life as we know it originated 9.7 billion years ago.

The researchers estimated the genetic complexity of phyla in the paleontological record by counting the number of non-redundant functional nucleotides in typical genomes of modern day descendants of each phylum. When plotting genetic complexity against time, the researchers found that genetic complexity increases exponentially, just as with Moore's law, but with a doubling rate of about once every 376 million years.

Extrapolating backwards, the researchers estimate that life began about 4 billion years after the universe formed and evolved the first bacteria just before the earth was formed. One might image that the supernova debris that formed the early solar system could have included bacteria-bearing chunks of rock from doomed planets circling supernova progenitor stars. If true, this retro-prediction has some interesting consequences in partly resolving the Fermi Paradox.

Another interesting consequence for those attempting to recreate life's origins in a lab: bacteria may have evolved under conditions very different from those on earth.

Submission + - Netflix to go HTML5, but not without DRM 1

FuzzNugget writes: In a recent blog post, Netflix details their plans to transition from Silverlight to HTML5, but with one caveat: HTML5 needs to include a built-in DRM scheme. With the W3C's proposed Encrypted Media Extensions, this may come to frition. But what would we sacrificing in openness and the web as we know it? How will developers of open source browsers like Firefox respond to this?

Submission + - ZDNet proclaims "Windows: It's over" 1

plastick writes: "You can think Windows 8 will evolve into something better, but the numbers show that Windows is coming to a dead end."

ZDNet is known to take the side of Microsoft in the past. ZDNet's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols explains "The very day the debate came to an end, this headline appeared: IDC: Global PC shipments plunge in worst drop in a generation. Sure, a lot of that was due to the growth of tablets and smartphones and the rise of the cloud, but Windows 8 gets to take a lot of the blame too. After all, the debate wasn't whether or not Windows 8 was any good. It's not. The debate was over whether it could be saved."

Comment Re:Openshot Kickstart Program (Score 2) 105

I love seeing different projects supporting each other on Kickstarter. OpenShot is awesome, and this seems like a great way for it to be improved (in addition to the two new platforms, the OpenShot folks have some pretty cool features planned). I have to say, I'm more excited about enhancements to OpenShot, than I am about Cox's new film :-)

Comment Re:Ignorance (Score 1) 461

No. Genetic material can enter the the bloodstream, despite the digestive process.

http://www.nature.com/cr/journal/v22/n1/full/cr2011158a.html

In short, the above study found white rice micro-RNA in observable quantities in the serum/plamsa of a statistically significant sample of human particpants. Here's some mainstream coverage of the study:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=vitamins-minerals-and-microrna
http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/09/21/2251238/what-you-eat-affects-your-genes

Do we know what the effect of long-term exposure to this foreign genetic material actually has? It's difficult to, since the vector of introduction was only discovered 18 months ago. Labelling might be a prudent choice until we have a nice 10-20yr study to show some conclusive results over a large and diverse population under test.

Comment Re:Ignorance (Score 1) 461

This is a highly specious argument. You're stating "espousing one untested toxin vs another more effective one, is equivalent to cargo cult plumbing", when in fact what you are calling "natural pesticides" is rarely the specific and heavy application of a specific "traditional" toxin.

Usually, it's more of a policy of IPM/IPC (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_pest_management ) which is more work-intensive, but contributes less to a pollution point-source, amongst other benefits, by utilizing a collection of methods rather than heavy reliance on a particular manufactured substance. Also, these methodologies decrease financial support of the potentially dubious production/manufacturing process of popular artificial pesticides (organophosphates and IGR's like methoprene). Additionally, it's important to recognize that this same argument uses unspecific wording to group all "natural" pesticides/insecticides together (such as neonicotinoids/pyrethroids/ryanoids versus other common mild herbicide/insectides). That alone should raise "straw-man" fallacy red flags.

I hope you're not really trying to equate RoundUp (or similar) with draping a net over your fruit tree.

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