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Comment Tor and bitcoin (Score 1) 535

From what I've read (and seen) the tor network is a much more valuable resource to these underground trades. There are numerous platforms for pseudo-anonymous online payment other than bitcoin used for these black market trades, many of them used in combination with Tor and '.onion' websites. By itself bitcoin is not much different from paper money, which is also used for anonymous payment in the real-world drug trade. Just like on our physical planet illegal trade is very hard without a safe venue, regardless of trade item or currency.

Comment Re:Not all devices come with Android Market (Score 1) 173

Good point. There is also Appbrain.com, which is a mirror of the android app store where you can download apps directly from the website or with the Appbrain .APK for android devices. Either that, or you can root any device and install the gapps package (all google apps including market) although the ease of that varies across devices.

Comment Plenty of free solutions (Score 1) 173

I use Lookout Security (virus scanner + location tracker) for my personal security, and for the paid version it also allows you to see in a compact view what personal information and permissions your apps are using. There are plenty of other free antivirus, firewall and security apps for Android. If you want to root your device (like jailbreaking an iPhone) you may also install firmware which encrypts the entire device automatically (MIUI etc) and allows infinite self modification of the system. When you install an app from the market it will tell you which permissions it needs, and android will stick to that. The only downside is (to my knowledge) you cannot install an app without giving it all the permissions it requires.
As a general rule of thumb, only use trusted sources to install apps from (Android Market) as almost all malicious apps are found in 3rd party markets

Check out the android market and do a few searches for what you need. Google hosts the whole market at http://market.android.com/
News

Submission + - Wikileaks Partners to Release 'Pakistan Papers' (dawn.com)

rickzor writes: The Dawn Media Group, as well as 'The Hindu' and NDTV have signed a memorandum for 'the exclusive first use in Pakistan of all the secret US diplomatic cables' Through partnership with Wikileaks, The Dawn Media Group has published the first set of the 'Pakistan Papers' and will "continue to publish [the cables] in the following days".

Comment Re:Supported devices (Score 2) 162

There's no reason to have to root for netflix.
The guys over at xda-dev hosted the app for all of us, and hacked it so it doesn't require a certain phone to run.
Tested and working on my droid 1

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1076150

Comment AnonOps is not the broader 'anonymous' (Score 2) 275

'Anonymous' (at least in this article) refers to the group AnonOps Communications, who host the numerous IRC channels, have a loose leader base, publish various 'flyers' of propaganda, and are the people behind 'Operation: Payback'. There is a difference between the group itself and an anonymous hacker, even if the anonymous hacker was acting out in the 'name' of anonymous.
what this article is saying is that the 'AnonOps' group had no involvement in the stealing of sony data, even if an anonymous hacker did.

references:
http://anonops.blogspot.com/
http://anonops.blogspot.com/2011/04/we-didnt-do-it-sony-incompetent.html
http://anonops.blogspot.com/2011/04/anonymous-hacks-westboro-baptist-church.html
http://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=anonops

Comment good to see new tech prosper (Score 1) 333

I'm sure Netflix had a jump in subscribers over their streaming service, and 4.99/mo for unlimited on demand movies/tv shows is a lot nicer than a Comcast TV subscription fee + pay per view movies fee + advertising. With the flexibility of internet streaming eliminating advertising and pay per view crap, its nice to see the numbers supporting this.

Comment slashdot covered its downfall, back in 2010 (Score 2, Informative) 144

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/11/12/226250/RockMelt-mdash-Right-Browser-Wrong-Platform

"RockMelt browser is a labor-saver for heavy users of the desktop social Web, but it doesn't fully deliver on the startup's promise to build a browser 'designed around you and how you use the Web.' That's because the social Web is less and less about the PC desktop, and more about mobile platforms and appliances like smartphones, tablets, and Internet-connected TVs."
Science

Submission + - Is Science Just a Matter of Faith?

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Pastabagel writes that the actual scientific answers to the questions of the origins of the universe, the evolution of man, and the fundamental nature of the cosmos involve things like wave equations and quantum electrodynamics and molecular biology that very few non-scientists can ever hope to understand and that if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that we accept the incredibly complex scientific phenomena in physics, astronomy, and biology through the process of belief, not through reason. When Richard Fenyman wrote “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics,” he was including himself which is disconcerting given how many books he wrote on that very subject. The fact is that it takes years of dedicated study before scientific truth in its truest, mathematical and symbolic forms can be understood. The rest of us rely on experts to explain it, someone who has seen and understood the truth and can dumb it down for us in a language we can understand. And therein lies the big problem for science and scientists. For most people, science is really a matter of trusting the expert who tells it to us and believing what they tell us. Trust and belief. Faith. Not understanding. How can we understand science, if we can’t understand the language of science? "We don’t learn science by doing science, we learn science by reading and memorizing. The same way we learn history. Do you really know what an atom is, or that a Higgs boson is a rather important thing, or did you simply accept they were what someone told you they were?""

Submission + - Nokia Confirms Symbian is No Longer Open Source (h-online.com) 1

theweatherelectric writes: The H reports that Nokia has confirmed that Symbian will no longer be open source. They write, 'Nokia has confirmed that it has closed the source code for the Symbian smartphone operating system. It says that despite it describing its new model for Symbian smartphone operating system development as "open and direct" the "open" part did not refer to "open source" but to being "open for business". The "open and direct" model is designed, according to Nokia, to "enable us to continue working with the remaining Japanese OEMs and the relatively small community of platform development collaborators we are already working with".'

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