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Comment Re:Military State (Score 3, Insightful) 351

Just the systematic purging of Arabs in Jerusalem (by refusing permits to Arabs to modify or build new houses) though is not something you would expect to find in any true developed democracy conscious of it's minorities.

You can wonder if a democracy can operate properly at all if it's main issues are related to security

The fact that most of Israel's neighbours are fucked up countries as well (although Jordan doesn't seem bad imho and we can hopefully see positive things developing in Egypt) doesn't plead in any way that Israel is a democratic country. It'd be like comparing the US to Mexico and conclude that the US doesn't seem to have a lot of gun fights

Comment The Right Question (Score 1) 522

Often people wonder whether we will be able to support a population of 7 or 10 or whatever billion people. I don't find that interesting, I'm sure we can have many billions more on just this planet alone. The real question is what will be left of nature with 10 billion western style living people? Will we as a species be able to preserve any significant amount of wildlife, ecosystems and natural beauty for our children?

Comment Re:Why? (Score 5, Informative) 572

The Space Station is in a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and will fall to the Earth without its regular altitude boosts

Getting the Space Station in a Geo synchronous orbit, let alone deep space (that means outside of the solar system), is a totally different league in terms of needed energy to overcome the gravity well called Earth and mainly the Sun. I can't be bothered to do the calculations but the amount of energy needed for a massive object as the ISS will be staggering.

Also question is for what? Most of the ISS is build for local gravity experiments maintained by manned personel. It has communications optimized for a LEO, etcetera. It won't be able to do much which can't be done by much cheaper ways with a new space probe.

It's like saying you can reach your local California supermarket with your bike, so hey you should be able to go to Hawaii with it as well!

Comment Fired? (Score 1) 300

They probably got a good pile of money in their pockets anyway

Also, from the same site: http://www.itworld.com/unified-communications/166637/5-skype-alternatives-linux-users

While many people use Skype for its free voice over IP (VoIP) services, Linux users have a love/hate relationship with it. Yes, Skype will run on some versions of Linux, but it doesn't run on all of them, and the Linux version (2.2-beta) lags far behind the Windows version (Skype 5.3). That's three major generations behind. Need I say more?

Seriously I can't take that site too serious now

Security

Firefox Extension Makes Social-Network ID Spoofing Trivial 185

Orome1 writes "A simple-to-use Firefox plugin presented yesterday at Toorcon in San Diego has hit the security world with the realization that squabbles about Facebook's changing privacy settings and various privacy breaches simply miss the point. 'When it comes to user privacy, SSL is the elephant in the room,' said Eric Butler, the developer of the extension in question, dubbed Firesheep. By installing and running it, anyone can 'sniff out' the unencrypted HTTP sessions currently allowing users on that network segment to access social networks, online services and other website requiring a login, and simply hijack them and impersonate the user."

Comment Re:Water means life? (Score 1) 104

It is a shame that current physicists are using valuable resources to search for "life" within such a limited framework.

Its a shame somebody gets modded up that much on /. for such an unconstructive post, not giving any idea how the very scarce resources of our physicists should be assigned and what your framework in such a quest would be.

It's funny.  Laugh.

Submission + - The Programmer Dress Code? (codethinked.com)

vinlud writes: Justin Etheredge made a nice collection of our heroes of the computer industry: "I really want to know what it is about programming, or computers in general, that makes people want to grow a beard, have long hair, and dress like a slob. So there you have it, my totally incomplete list of bearded, long haired, casually dressed visionaries. Got any other great pictures of any computer scientists/software engineers? Let us know in the comments!"
Wireless Networking

Submission + - cell-phones used to avoid car-pedestrian accidents

Anton writes: "This deadly accident would not have happened if it had been between a Nissan driver and a DoCoMo user?" Sounds weird? But might happen: Nissan Japan announced today that it started testing ITS in Japan. This Intelligent Transport System aims to prevent accidents between cars and pedestrians using GPS data fom pedestrian's cellphones. Pedestrian locations are transmitted to a central server which displays a warning message in the car's navigation system if and where an accident is likely to accur. Nissan hopes to reduce accidents ecpecially in blind-spot situations this way. If implemented, some accidents involving pedestrians might simply not happen if the pedestrian carries a GPS enabled G3 cell-phone. The research is conducted in collaboration with NTT DoCoMo Japan. ITS means that DoCoMo users, if they want to benefit from it, will have to agree that their position is constantly transmitted to a central server. What about the legal and security implications? And will Nissan and DoCoMo be willing to share protocols and technology so that other car-manufacturers and cell-phone companies can join the system?
United States

Submission + - CS programs changing to attract women students

Magnifico writes: In today's The New York Times, there is a story about American universities are actively recruiting women to be Computer Science students and changing CS courses to do so. The story, "Computer Science Takes Steps to Bring Women to the Fold", explains that the number of women in CS is shrinking: "Women received about 38 percent of the computer science bachelor's degrees awarded in the United States in 1985, the peak year, but in 2003, the figure was only about 28 percent, according to the National Science Foundation." One of the largest barriers to recruiting women to the field is the "nerd factor". To attract women students to the CS field, "Moving emphasis away from programming proficiency was a key to the success of programs Dr. Blum and her colleagues at Carnegie Mellon instituted to draw more women into computer science." Changes at CMU increased women students in the CS program from 8 percent to nearly 40 percent.

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