Comment Uh... (Score 5, Funny) 35
Perhaps a little more description in the
Submission + - Indiana Joins Battle Against Invasive Carp 1
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Indiana has joined the battle that Michigan has taken to the US Supreme Court against invasive Asian carp to force Illinois to immediately close the O'Brien Lock and Dam in the Calumet-Sag Channel and the Chicago Controlling Works in the Illinois River, a stopgap measure aimed at keeping the fish out of the great lakes. The 100-pound fish have voracious appetites and rapid reproduction rates that could ravage native lake species and experts fear that the invasive carp, which have been traveling up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers for decades, will devastate the $7 billion Great Lakes fisheries. The carp were imported to the Mississippi River basin by catfish farmers in the 1970's to remove algae and suspended matter out of their ponds. During large floods in the early 1990s, many of the catfish farm ponds overflowed their banks, and the Asian carp were released into local waterways. "This is not political grandstanding or some kind of publicity stunt," says Noah Hall, a professor at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit. "This is a very solid case." The lawsuit follows tests last month that show the carp may have crossed an electric fish barrier that pulses DC current into the water on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal meant to halt their advance, putting them within 6 miles of Lake Michigan. "The actions of Illinois and federal authorities have not been enough to assure us the Lakes are safe," says Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox. "That's why the waterways must be shut down until we are assured that Michigan will be protected.""
Submission + - Raise a glass: time(2) turns 40 tonight! (indiegameproducer.com)
ddt writes: "Raise your glasses of champagne in a toast at midnight. The time(2) system call turns 40 tonight, and is now officially "over the hill". It's dutifully keeping track of time for clueful operating systems since January 1, 1970."
Submission + - LHC almost ready for restart (tinypic.com) 1
mu22le writes: Yesterday the CERN accelerator technicians have started the last preparations to get the LHC up and working again. The first proton beam coming from the SPS accelerator was injected in the machine and subsequently dumped. In the following weeks several bunches of protons will be inserted into the LHC system travelling for a section of the machine until all the sectors have been tested. After that the first beam will start circulating in the LHC machine and the four experiments built on it will observe the first collisions.
http://elogbook.cern.ch/eLogbook/attach_viewer.jsp?attach_id=1049800
http://elogbook.cern.ch/eLogbook/attach_viewer.jsp?attach_id=1049800
Submission + - GeoCities shuts down
Lillesvin writes: Today is the day GeoCities shuts down. For those who didn't grow up with those GeoCities banners and poorly formatted (at best) HTML, this might seem odd to even mention, but those of us who did grow up with it will remember it with mixed feelings. After all, in spite of the poorly written content and the sad HTML, some people seem to think that GeoCities and the likes provided part of the basis for the social networks we know, love---and hate---today.
Submission + - Canonical halts Ubuntu CD free-for-all (pcpro.co.uk) 1
Barence writes: Canonical has announced that it's to begin limiting the number of free Ubuntu CDs people can order. The ShipIt scheme has proved so popular that Ubuntu will now only ship one free CD to users who haven't ordered a disc before. Users will now be required to upgrade to new versions through online upgrades, or by downloading the latest version as an ISO and burning it to CD themselves."While these CDs are often referred to as 'free CDs', they are of course not free of cost to Canonical," says Canonical's chief operating office Jane Silber. "We want to continue this programme, but Ubuntu’s growth means that some changes are necessary."
Submission + - The Machines May Be Virtual, But The Security Prob (theaccidentalsuccessfulcio.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In the future, CIOs are going to have a whole new set of security issues that come along with the popularity of virtual machines. The rules for how best to secure these boxes that really aren’t boxes have not been established yet. What can you do to make yourself ready to take on this new challenge?
Submission + - Sex In Games (or the lack thereof) part one (criticalgamer.co.uk)
scruffybr writes: Sex! WUH!! What iiis it good for? Absolutely nothin’!”, as nobody ever sung.
The main reasons nobody’s ever sung that is a) it would be a terribly unpopular opinion, and b) it is self evidently untrue. It is, as I hope anybody reading this would know, how human beings ordinarily make babies (at least until Aldous Huxley’s dystopian production line seen in Brave New World comes about). It also gives fundamental christians another excuse to hate themselves and everybody else. It is something that swims through our thoughts every day – come on, admit it – and something that is exploited by advertising gnomes whenever possible. It is an inescapable and hugely important part of the adult mind and life. As such, every entertainment medium embraces it where the audience is deemed suitable. Video games are no different; though developers and publishers have always been perplexingly cack handed in their techniques.
The main reasons nobody’s ever sung that is a) it would be a terribly unpopular opinion, and b) it is self evidently untrue. It is, as I hope anybody reading this would know, how human beings ordinarily make babies (at least until Aldous Huxley’s dystopian production line seen in Brave New World comes about). It also gives fundamental christians another excuse to hate themselves and everybody else. It is something that swims through our thoughts every day – come on, admit it – and something that is exploited by advertising gnomes whenever possible. It is an inescapable and hugely important part of the adult mind and life. As such, every entertainment medium embraces it where the audience is deemed suitable. Video games are no different; though developers and publishers have always been perplexingly cack handed in their techniques.
Submission + - Digital River makes hash of Windows 7 upgrade (theregister.co.uk)
kel5ash writes: Microsoft has been flooded with complaints from hundreds of disgruntled university bods who have struggled to download or successfully install Windows 7 files supplied by Digital River.
Users weren't only hit with problems trying to download the software. Some managed to grab the necessary files via Digital River's site, only then to be faced either with incompatibility issues or, worse still, having errors spat out when they attempted to unpack files from the download.
"Rather then providing an ISO file for students to download, they [Digital River] provided an unpacker and a couple of .BOX files which must be unpacked into a disk image," a Windows 7 customer told us. "It seems that users with x86 systems cannot unpack the files for an x64 download, the unpacker halts with an error."
And The Register has heard from unhappy academics in Australia too.
"Basically, when running the setup file to 'unpack' the two .BOX files (note that they have chosen to use a non-standard format, rather than providing an ISO that everyone can work with), the installer fails and throws an 'unspecified error' message," one Oz reader similarly reported. "This is unacceptable, and personally I'm hoping for a solution, or my money back."
Microsoft said that it and Digital River were "investigating" that particular problem. In the meantime it's telling users that the likely cause relates to incomplete files becoming corrupted on their computers.
"Users encountering this issue should try and re-download the files by logging into your [Digital River] order," said Microsoft.
It's fair to say that Digital River has made a complete hash of adequately explaining what users can and can't do with the upgrades on offer. Add to that the fact that the supplier failed to provide a simple .ISO file to customers downloading the software and it's of little wonder that so many customers who paid up for the Windows 7 academic offer in good faith are struggling to get their hands on the OS.
Users weren't only hit with problems trying to download the software. Some managed to grab the necessary files via Digital River's site, only then to be faced either with incompatibility issues or, worse still, having errors spat out when they attempted to unpack files from the download.
"Rather then providing an ISO file for students to download, they [Digital River] provided an unpacker and a couple of
And The Register has heard from unhappy academics in Australia too.
"Basically, when running the setup file to 'unpack' the two
Microsoft said that it and Digital River were "investigating" that particular problem. In the meantime it's telling users that the likely cause relates to incomplete files becoming corrupted on their computers.
"Users encountering this issue should try and re-download the files by logging into your [Digital River] order," said Microsoft.
It's fair to say that Digital River has made a complete hash of adequately explaining what users can and can't do with the upgrades on offer. Add to that the fact that the supplier failed to provide a simple
Submission + - SPAM: Netflix Coming to Sony PS3
itwbennett writes: 'Microsoft has always seemed rather enthusiastic when it comes to throwing around the word 'exclusive' and here is another case in point,' says blogger Peter Smith. Netflix and Sony have announced that Netflix streaming is coming to the Sony Playstation 3 as early as next month. Back in August when Microsoft was rolling out its new dashboard update, one of the features it was talking up was Netflix streaming, says Smith, and it said 'This exclusive partnership offers you the ability to instantly stream movies and TV episodes from Netflix to the television via Xbox 360. Xbox 360 will be the only game console to offer this movie-watching experience...' Apparently, in Microsoft parlance, 'exclusive partnership' means 'we launched it first' and not 'we inked a deal with Netflix preventing this feature from appearing on the competition's hardware.' All this is good news for PS3 owners who can now sign up to be notified of Netflix availability for their system.
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Submission + - No hand held devices in Ontario cars. (handsfreeinfo.com)
NIK282000 writes: In Ontario it is now a ticket-able offense to text, email or try to navigate with your GPS to cut down on accidents caused by drivers who aren't paying attention. But it seems to me that they have thrown the baby out with the bath water because it is now also a $500 fine to change your radio station, change songs on your MP3 player or even drink your morning coffee. It can also be enforced to the point where changing the climate controls on your dash can get you fined because it requires you to take your hands off the wheel. Though this was a good idea it seems to have been taken a little to far.
Submission + - The SSD That You Can Finally Afford, Kingston 40GB (legitreviews.com)
ocfreak writes: Kingston Technology Company today announced the release of the SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive, the latest addition to its V (Value) family of solid-state drives (SSD). The drive is available for as low as $84.99 after rebates (U.S. only) at e-tailer Newegg.com when it comes out on November 9th, 2009. The Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive is built using 2nd Generation Intel SSD technology, so the drive has sequential speeds of up to 170MB/sec. read and 40MB/sec. write. The hardware analysts over at Legit Reviews found the drive able to hit 230MB/s read and 40MB/s in their tests and has more than enough room to install Windows 7 64-bit. This might just be one of the best and most cost-effective ways to accelerate any desktop'(TM)s boot, shutdown and application load times. At $85 this drive might be the catalyst to bring SSDs into the mainstream!
Comment Re:Neither here... (Score 1) 527
I think you'd be surprised by the number of people (non-tech included) that are aware of the poor reliability of Comcast's DNS servers. It only happens once before they call their family tech. They'll call customer service, but CS won't be able to resolve the problem as they'll just recommend a reboot of the equipment.
I've even known of Comcast installers (contractors) that will set the second or third DNS server entry to Verizon's DNS (4.2.2.4) just so that when their local DNS servers go down, the customer's connection will continue to resolve domain names.
Nothing quite like having an irate housewife call on a weekend because she can't lookup her webmail or Oprah's book of the week.
Submission + - Nokia Developed Wireless Power-Harvesting Phones (technologyreview.com)
Al writes: "An engineer from Nokia's UK research labs says that the company is developing technology that can harvest ambient electromagnetic radiation to keep a cellphone going. The reserarcher says that his group is working towards a prototype that could harvest up to 50 milliwatts of power--enough to slowly recharge a phone that is switched off. He says current prototypes can harvest 3 to 5 milliwatts. It will require a wideband receiver capable of capturing signals from between 500 megahertz and 10 gigahertz--a range that encompasses many different radio communication signals. Other researchers have developed devices that can harvest more modest power from select frequencies. A team from Intel previously developed a compact sensor capable of drawing 6 microwatts from a 1.0-megawatt TV antenna 4.1 kilometers away."
Submission + - CIA's VC Arm Thrives on the Web
An anonymous reader writes: Since 1999, the CIA has invested over $130 million in Internet businesses via its VC arm, In-Q-Tel. While In-Q-Tel has made numerous strategic investments, and done well for itself, it's unclear what the implications of such investments mean for national and personal security in the U.S. An analysis of In-Q-Tel's investments shows the CIA is largely investing in sophisticated data and traffic analytics. One of its more successful investments was in a geo-targeting and satellite-mapping company, Keyhole, which was thereafter sold to Google and renamed Google Earth. With the United States' federal spy agency investing heavily in data tracking technologies, is there reason to further fear what we share online?
