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Cloud

Gmail Accidentally Resets 150,000 Accounts 401

Posted by samzenpus from the did-you-need-that-mail? dept.
tsj5j writes "Many users have reported loss of their Gmail accounts, as they signed in to find their email accounts reset — losing years of email history. This appears to be a result of a bug which treats existing owners as new users. For those affected, Google is currently trying to resolve the problem. For the rest of us, perhaps this is a timely reminder to backup our data and be less trusting of the cloud."
Science

Secrets of a Memory Champion 290

Posted by samzenpus from the never-forget dept.
Hugh Pickens writes writes "We've all heard of people who claim to have 'photographic memories.' Now Joshua Foer writes in the NY Times magazine (reg. may be required) that a 'skilled memory' can be acquired and proves it by explaining how he trained his brain to became a world-class memory athlete winning first place in the speed cards competition last year at the USA Memory Championship by memorizing a deck of cards in one minute forty seconds. According to Foer, memory training is a lost art that dates from antiquity. 'Today we have books, photographs, computers and an entire superstructure of external devices to help us store our memories outside our brains, but it wasn't so long ago that culture depended on individual memories,' writes Foer. 'It was considered a form of character-building, a way of developing the cardinal virtue of prudence and, by extension, ethics.' Foer says that the secret to supermemory is a system of training and discipline that works by creating 'memory palaces' on the fly filled with lavish images, painting a scene in the mind so unlike any other it cannot be forgotten. 'Photographic memory is a detestable myth. Doesn't exist. In fact, my memory is quite average,' concludes Ed Cooke who recently invented a code that allows him to convert every number from 0 to 999,999,999 into a unique image that he can then deposit in a memory palace. 'What you have to understand is that even average memories are remarkably powerful if used properly.'"

Comment Not much to do (Score 5, Informative) 459

by enec (#35272714) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Is There a War Against Small Mail Servers?

Most ISPs block outgoing port 25 because 99.99% of that traffic is viruses or otherwise malicious computers trying to send spam. Even more mail services block all dynamic pools used by major ISPs because of the same reason.

Just invest a few bucks a month into a cheap hosted VPS behind a static IP where you can run the server.

Comment Re:Samsung Support (Score 1) 161

by enec (#35200912) Attached to: Samsung Unveils Galaxy Tab 10.1, Galaxy S II

I agree. I'm a (very dissatisfied) owner of a Samsung Galaxy Spica. When I bought it it shipped with Android 1.5, but Samsung promised to deliver 2.1 "soon".

In the end it took something like three months of "any day now", and they didn't offer the chance to upgrade OTA. When I installed Samsung New PC Studio (a complete rip-off of Nokia's PC suite btw, with the exception that Nokia's suite works) to update, I first had to struggle a few hours to get the software to recognize my phone at all. When it finally did, I had to select the "update" option for the phone half a dozen times until the software managed to connect and realize that there was an update out for my phone.

After the software started updating and put my phone in some sort of recovery mode, the computer would helpfully tell me that my phone had been disconnected and an unknown, malfunctioning USB device had been plugged in. Needless to say the PC studio software didn't ever finish updating, it thought the phone was unplugged as well and usually crashed.

I tried to update using different operating systems, different computers, different versions of their PC suite, different data cables, et cetera. Finally I gave up and took the phone to Samsung after sales service. The fsckers kept my phone for three weeks, and when I finally got to pick it up they said they had updated the OS to Android 2.1... Guess what? It was still on 1.5, and all they had done was reset the phone to factory defaults. Something I could've done in two minutes.
News

Submission + - Blocking child porn sites "exacerbates problem" (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: Handing the responsibility of shutting down child porn sites to web firms and watchdogs removes any incentive for police to investigate the crimes, according to a European digital rights group. It cited the UK's Internet Watch Foundation as an example of the Government passing the buck.

"The IWF is a system that has taken on a life of its own,” EDRI's EU advocacy co-ordinator Joe McNamee told PC Pro. “It's an extra-judicial system that leads to websites being blocked. That doesn't stop the abuse from taking place. The Government is happy with a system where it can show activity in this important policy area without necessarily having to devote significant resources to the problem."

Comment Re:what the.... (Score 2) 2254

by enec (#35008522) Attached to: Slashdot Launches Re-Design

Lucky you. I'm stuck with a 2 GHz Celeron and 768 megs of RAM at work, and the site is barely usable on Chrome. When I try to scroll down with the mouse wheel it actually takes two or three seconds to do anything.
Slashdot.org

Slashdot Launches Re-Design 2254

Posted by CmdrTaco from the lookit-all-that-shiny dept.
Today we are pleased to announce the launch of the third major re-design in our 13.5 year history, and I don't think it looks half bad. The new theme represents a serious gutting of the underlying HTML and CSS, as well as all-new graphics. There will be many design wiggles, bug squashes, and compatibility glitches that survived testing, so bear with us for a bit. Please direct your bug reports and feedback (good and bad!) to Garrett Woodworth who is currently in charge of such things. Thanks to him, Wes, Vlad, Dean, Phil and Tim, who have each worked hard to get this out the door. Juggling the needs of users, editors, and various business functions is a hard job, and you guys did good.
Google

Submission + - Google acknowledges Nexus S failure on long calls (phonearena.com)

Submitted by
alx5000
alx5000 writes: "Not that long after Apple's iPhone 4 Antennagate, it's now Google's turn to remind us how smartphones are increasingly more "smart" and less "phone": a failure on the new Nexus S makes the phone reboot mid-call mostly during calls longer that 3 minutes, but even during shorter ones. If this turns to be a software problem, things could get hairy, with Gingerbread for the rest of Android terminals just around the corner."

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