Comment Re:Be the Change You Wish to See in the World (Score 1) 438
Or by having someone else take the interview for you. Most profs in big courses don't know all their students.
Comment Re:China being the lead in space... (Score 1) 292
Rocks are good, too. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress
Comment Re:Distributed Mail (Score 3, Insightful) 470
The issue that Silent Circle points out is that SMTP is inherently unable to provide security against traffic analysis. Even if the body of the email is encrypted, the headers cannot be.
So yes, you can run your own email server, and require that only gpg traffic pass through it. But that won't keep you secure against traffic analysis (aka "metadata collection") with collection performed at your ISP.
Comment Re:lock out? (Score 1) 114
You can't re-use nodes, but you _can_ put in crossing lines, which makes the grease smears less useful.
Comment Re:Congress is "angry" (Score 2) 322
We have to protect our phoney baloney jobs here, gentlemen! We must do something about this immediately! Immediately! Immediately! Harrumph! Harrumph! Harrumph!
Comment Re:Why not do this for all software? (Score 1) 68
Most software (games being the obvious exception) has the possibility of creating harm to humans. Payroll, accounting, project management, word processing, etc. all have that potential.
Submission + - Kentucky Lawmakers Shocked to Find Evolution in Biology Tests (arstechnica.com) 1
ahadsell writes: A report surfaced this week that suggests Kentucky legislators may be experiencing a sort of cognitive dissonance that is likely to be a preview of things we can expect elsewhere. After dictating that schools in the state include tests based on national standards, the state lawmakers were shocked to find that evolution made a prominent appearance on the science tests. Considering that the same legislative body was considering undercutting evolution less than two years ago, this may have come as a bit of a surprise.
It really shouldn't have.
Nationally, the No Child Left Behind Act has dictated that there need to be standards for educational performance, and standardized tests will be used to make sure those standards are met. Although that push started with basics like math and language, national science standards were also called for, and many states have since implemented them; the Kentucky legislature apparently adopted the national standards in 2009. ACT, a company that creates and manages standardized testing, was contracted to handle the science tests.
Given that evolution is extremely well supported and provides the central organizing idea of biology, ACT's tests featured it heavily. That made a number of the state legislators rather unhappy, and gave them the chance to demonstrate that they should not be setting education policy.
It really shouldn't have.
Nationally, the No Child Left Behind Act has dictated that there need to be standards for educational performance, and standardized tests will be used to make sure those standards are met. Although that push started with basics like math and language, national science standards were also called for, and many states have since implemented them; the Kentucky legislature apparently adopted the national standards in 2009. ACT, a company that creates and manages standardized testing, was contracted to handle the science tests.
Given that evolution is extremely well supported and provides the central organizing idea of biology, ACT's tests featured it heavily. That made a number of the state legislators rather unhappy, and gave them the chance to demonstrate that they should not be setting education policy.
Submission + - BBC delivered petabytes of content in a single Olympics day (computerworlduk.com)
DerekduPreez writes: "The BBC has revealed that on the busiest day of its London 2012 Olympics coverage it delivered 2.8 petabytes worth of content, peaking when Bradley Wiggins won gold, where it shifted 700Gb/s.
It has also said that over a 24-hour period on the busiest Olympic days it had more traffic to bbc.co.uk than it did for the entire BBC coverage of the FIFA World Cup 2010 games.
“We wanted to offer the whole breadth of the Games to audiences. It’s been hugely gratifying to see from our data that they embraced our comprehensive coverage: we saw over 106 million requests for BBC Olympic video content across all online platforms,” said Cait O’Riordan, head of product at BBC Sport and London 2012.
BBC Sport Online’s most requested live video stream was of the tennis single finals, where Serena Williams and Andy Murray won golds, which saw 820,000 requests."
It has also said that over a 24-hour period on the busiest Olympic days it had more traffic to bbc.co.uk than it did for the entire BBC coverage of the FIFA World Cup 2010 games.
“We wanted to offer the whole breadth of the Games to audiences. It’s been hugely gratifying to see from our data that they embraced our comprehensive coverage: we saw over 106 million requests for BBC Olympic video content across all online platforms,” said Cait O’Riordan, head of product at BBC Sport and London 2012.
BBC Sport Online’s most requested live video stream was of the tennis single finals, where Serena Williams and Andy Murray won golds, which saw 820,000 requests."
Submission + - Apple's iPhone is so secure, the Justice Department can't crack it (bgr.com)
zacharye writes: In the five years since Apple launched the iPhone, the popular device has gone from a malicious hacker’s dream to law enforcement’s worst nightmare. As recounted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Technology Review blog, a Justice Department official recently took the stage at the DFRWS computer forensics conference in Washington, D.C. and told attendees that the beefed up security in iOS is now so good that it has become a nightmare for law enforcement...
Comment Re:Another nail in the Coffin of the Hard Drive (Score 4, Interesting) 82
Also *raises hand*.
On one system we stored programs by wiring them into a ROM. By hand. One wire per word, wrapped around the center pole of the E-cores clockwise for a 1, or counterclockwise for a 0. Then solder one end of the wire to the correct X address, and the other end to the correct Y address. Total, 256 16-bit words per board (Z was decoded to board-select).
Yes, I am old.
Submission + - Web 2.0 'distracts good design'
stevedcc writes: "The BBC is running a story about web 2.0 and usability, including comments from Jakob Nielsen stating "Hype about Web 2.0 is making web firms neglect the basics of good design".
From the article:
From the article:
"He warned that the rush to make webpages more dynamic often meant users were badly served.
He said sites peppered with personalisation tools were in danger of resembling the "glossy but useless" sites at the height of the dotcom boom.
Submission + - DoD Blocks Websites on Its Machines Worldwide
eldavojohn writes: "Recently, the United States military has been trying to control what is relayed from troops abroad via the internet and now they're censoring what troops can access. In a memo[PDF], US Army Commander Bell announced that popular sites about to be blocked include: YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos, FileCabi, MySpace, BlackPlanet, Hi5, Pandora, MTV, 1.fm, live365, and the photo-sharing site Photobucket. If you look at the users as employees, this isn't anything different from actions US companies are taking — however, if these sites are blocked during the entire time personnel serve, I could see it as more than a mere annoyance."
Submission + - Is Google making us dumber?
franticindustries writes: "Does this happen to you a lot: you try to remember something, but then you give up quickly and just Google it? Google is so effective in retrieving information that our brains are telling us this information is not needed. Therefore, we're forgetting things like unit conversion, basic calculus, addresses and phone numbers. This might be an evolutionary step towards forgetting what's irrelevant and focusing on what's important; or maybe Google is just making us dumber."
Submission + - KDE 4.0-alpha1 Released
brunascle writes: The first alpha release of KDE 4 has been released, codenamed "Knut". At the same time, the KDE Human Computer Interaction Working Group is announcing that HIG hunting season is open, urging users to reports violations of the KDE Human Interface Guidelines.
Submission + - More options for Yahoo Photo members
Justin Christman writes: "Online photos have become big news recently. With MySpace acquiring Photobucket and Yahoo shutting down its Yahoo Photos service in favor of Flickr, the "big boys" are making significant moves into the online photo service business. This means potential headaches for consumers as services get transferred, moved, and users are forced to make decisions about how best to manage their photos.
This is already happening to some extent with Yahoo, which is offering three options to users to maintain their photos:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/photos/photos3/cl osing/closing-03.html
However, the backup CD option they are promoting is not the best alternative. Their partner, Englaze, which is integrated with both Yahoo Photos and Flickr, is relatively weak in comparison to other options. For one thing, it gives users very little choice in which photos can be backed up — in reality it is all or nothing. Perhaps even more significant for cost-conscious consumers that it is expensive — $6.95 + $1.70 shipping = $8.65.
Our product, Backupr (yahoo.backupr.com or www.backupr.com) is also integrated with Yahoo Photos:
http://new.photos.yahoo.com/shop/product_partners
But unlike Englaze, Backupr gives users more control over which photos they'd like to back up and a CD of photos is free (plus $3.99 shipping worldwide), adding up to a total cost of less then half what Englaze is charging.
Yahoo could easily have decided to give users more options and let them make the choice of how to best manage their photos, but for their own business reasons they decided to only refer to Englaze's solution — effectively making customers either use a more expensive and less user-friendly option or do their own legwork to find a solution.
It is important that customers know that they have better options. After all, these are their photos, not Yahoo's, and what can be more personal and precious to individuals and families than memories captured in photos.
Justin
—
Justin Christman
for CustomCD.us
Justin.Christman@earthlink.net"
This is already happening to some extent with Yahoo, which is offering three options to users to maintain their photos:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/photos/photos3/c
However, the backup CD option they are promoting is not the best alternative. Their partner, Englaze, which is integrated with both Yahoo Photos and Flickr, is relatively weak in comparison to other options. For one thing, it gives users very little choice in which photos can be backed up — in reality it is all or nothing. Perhaps even more significant for cost-conscious consumers that it is expensive — $6.95 + $1.70 shipping = $8.65.
Our product, Backupr (yahoo.backupr.com or www.backupr.com) is also integrated with Yahoo Photos:
http://new.photos.yahoo.com/shop/product_partners
But unlike Englaze, Backupr gives users more control over which photos they'd like to back up and a CD of photos is free (plus $3.99 shipping worldwide), adding up to a total cost of less then half what Englaze is charging.
Yahoo could easily have decided to give users more options and let them make the choice of how to best manage their photos, but for their own business reasons they decided to only refer to Englaze's solution — effectively making customers either use a more expensive and less user-friendly option or do their own legwork to find a solution.
It is important that customers know that they have better options. After all, these are their photos, not Yahoo's, and what can be more personal and precious to individuals and families than memories captured in photos.
Justin
—
Justin Christman
for CustomCD.us
Justin.Christman@earthlink.net"
