Comment And Nicola Roxon too... (Score 1) 120
Seriously, what is it about the Attorney General's department that turns ordinary politicians into authoritarian arseholes?
Comment Silicon Snake Oil (Score 1) 255
Interestingly enough, this exact state of affairs was predicted by Cliff in "Silicon Snake Oil", having seen the same thing happen with CB, and in Usenet and the fledging web.
His previous book lamented the sad state of computer security at the time, and if anything it's gotten worse.
His previous book lamented the sad state of computer security at the time, and if anything it's gotten worse.
Comment Sanction as in, "Eiger Sanction" (Score 1) 217
It's a sort of threat, you see.
Comment Map/Territory Confusion? (Score 1) 475
This objection makes no sense. Why would someone in South Africa be privy to this conversation anyway? What you label a specific instant in time does not change the underlying instant, merely how people feel about it.
In your example above, in either time scheme, without knowing My Busy's locale, the South African has no way of knowing how late the dinner was (relative to Mr Busy's normal dinner time). But in Zulu time, the South African knows precisely when dinner was eventually eaten (13:00 Zulu).
In your example above, in either time scheme, without knowing My Busy's locale, the South African has no way of knowing how late the dinner was (relative to Mr Busy's normal dinner time). But in Zulu time, the South African knows precisely when dinner was eventually eaten (13:00 Zulu).
Comment The MCP has it locked in a light-garage (Score 1) 529
Your user exceeded his quota today. No more light cycling until the account is back within limits.
Comment You really strawberried that point... (Score 1) 327
Good Horse.
(I don't claim credit for this; It's just such a useful retort to the whole "language evolves" excuse for poor spelling and grammar.)
(I don't claim credit for this; It's just such a useful retort to the whole "language evolves" excuse for poor spelling and grammar.)
Submission + - The Attacker's Trade-Off: Stealth Versus Resilience (darkreading.com)
CowboyRobot writes: "After years of nurturing a botnet from a coding exercise into a powerful tool/weapon, attackers must be careful how they use the botnet so that it's not detected. One fingerpringt that attackers can leave behind comes from usage of domain-generation algorithms (DGA). Detection of this is not difficult and so its usage by attackers shows how serious they are as they balance between strengthening their network and exposing it to detection. Peer-to-peer botnets leave even more distinctive fingerprints and expose themselves even more by frequently connecting to peers. "Attackers focused on cyberespionage and covert operations — known in the defense industry as the "advanced persistent threat," or APT — create stealthy malware that focuses on deniability over dollars.""
Submission + - Can we make accountable research software? (bytesizebio.net) 1
Shipud writes: This practices of code writing for day-to-day bioinformatic lab research are completely unlike anything software engineers are taught. In fact, they are actually the opposite in many ways, and may horrify you if you come from a classic software-industry development environment. Research coding is not done with the purpose of being robust, or reusable, or long-lived in development and versioning repositories. Upgrades are not provided and the product, such as it is, is definitely not user-friendly for public consumption. It is usually the code’s writer who is the consumer, or in some cases a few others in the lab. In most cases research results are published without the code that was used to generate them. There are no resources in most labs to make that code fir for public consumption. How can this problem be solved?
Submission + - HP's bad quarter could prove bad for America (computerworld.com)
dcblogs writes: Hewlett-Packard’s bad quarter this week, which included an $8.9 billion loss, may be all Chinese-based Lenovo needs to take the top position in global PC sales away from HP. Both Gartner and IDC show Lenovo very close to taking over the number one spot. Gartner's report on second quarter PC shipments showed HP in the lead position by shipments with 14.9% of the world's PC market, and Lenovo with 14.7%. IDC's latest market share numbers give HP a little more breathing room. It listed HP's second quarter worldwide PC share at 15.5%, and Lenovo at 14.9%. Some Wall Street analysts are saying that a PC division spin-off may make sense for both companies. If that happened a likely buyer might be Lenovo which bought IBM’s PC division in 2005. The idea of an overseas firm taking over the PC market worries some. Robert Atkinson, who heads the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in Washington, said, "At some point you draw a line in the sand and say no more retreat, we stand and fight here. If PCs go, what's next? Semiconductors? Other components? At some point the United States has to say what are we not willing to lose in foreign competition.”
Submission + - OSU's Breakthrough Microbial Fuel Cell Turns Waste to Power (oregonstate.edu)
An anonymous reader writes: A team of engineers from Oregon State University has developed a breakthrough microbial fuel cell that is capable of generating 10 to 50 times more electricity from waste than other MFCs. The team hopes that their innovation will enable waste treatment plants to not only power themselves, but also sell excess electricity back to the grid. “If this technology works on a commercial-scale the way we believe it will, the treatment of wastewater could be a huge energy producer, not a huge energy cost,” said associate professor Hong Liu. “This could have an impact around the world, save a great deal of money, provide better water treatment and promote energy sustainability.”
Submission + - Seattle Forced to Shut Off City Data Center (slashdot.org)
Nerval's Lobster writes: "On Aug. 23, Mayor Mike McGinn of Seattle informed residents that the city would partially shut down its municipal data center for five days including the Labor Day weekend. As a result, city residents will be unable to pay bills, apply for business licenses, or take advantage of other online services.
In a Webcast press conference, McGinn isolated the issue as a failure in one of the electrical “buses” that supplies power to the data center. Because that piece of equipment began overheating, the city had to begin taking servers and applications offline to prevent overloading the system. The maintenance will cost the city $2.1 million of its maintenance budget.
A second power bus will remain operational, supplying enough electricity to power redundant systems for critical life and fire safety systems, including 911 services and fire dispatch. The city’s Web sites should also be up and running in some capacity."
In a Webcast press conference, McGinn isolated the issue as a failure in one of the electrical “buses” that supplies power to the data center. Because that piece of equipment began overheating, the city had to begin taking servers and applications offline to prevent overloading the system. The maintenance will cost the city $2.1 million of its maintenance budget.
A second power bus will remain operational, supplying enough electricity to power redundant systems for critical life and fire safety systems, including 911 services and fire dispatch. The city’s Web sites should also be up and running in some capacity."
Submission + - Microsoft Orders DMCA Takedown for Windows 8 Screenshots (ngohq.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A few days ago NGOHQ.com published a screenshots gallery of Microsoft Windows 8 RTM. Apparently posting screenshots of Microsoft's software is considered a copyright infringement... or at least that's what Microsoft thinks. A few hours ago NGOHQ.com received the following e-mail from Google:
"Google has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that some of your materials allegedly infringe upon the copyrights of others. The URLs of the allegedly infringing materials may be found at the end of this message. The notice that we received, with any personally identifying information removed, may be found at http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=515551."
"Google has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that some of your materials allegedly infringe upon the copyrights of others. The URLs of the allegedly infringing materials may be found at the end of this message. The notice that we received, with any personally identifying information removed, may be found at http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=515551."
Submission + - Github competitor based on open source software (gitlab.io) 1
tHe sYtS writes: Github hosts a lot of open source software but the site itself runs on closed source software. Gitlab.io will offer an alternative that runs on Gitlab, an open source web front-end for git. Today you can sign up for their beta.
Submission + - A.I. Designer Thanks He Can Outsmart Humans (chaoscollective.org) 1
akumpf writes: "Hartli, a new service released by The Chaos Collective, claims to be smarter than any single designer by looking at the design of thousands of webpages at once.
So what exactly does Hartli do? Well, during the day Hartli spends his time walking around the internet and finding interesting morsels and design facts to add to his massive collection. Each website is visually scanned for the kinds of things that give it personality, make it easy to read, or convey information to users. What kind of things? Well, things like color, brightness, contrast, alignment, repetition, typography, font sizes, images, line weight, roundness, boldness, proximity, and overall layout. It's a lot to keep track of, but Hartli couldn't be happier.
Go on, type in any website (like hacker news, engadget, slashdot, cute overload, or anything you want), click on the green recommendation button, and see what Hartli thinks would make the site better.
Hartli is in beta testing and currently provides all recommendation services for free until September 1st.
Sorry Slashdot, but he thinks you're aggressive and cynical."
So what exactly does Hartli do? Well, during the day Hartli spends his time walking around the internet and finding interesting morsels and design facts to add to his massive collection. Each website is visually scanned for the kinds of things that give it personality, make it easy to read, or convey information to users. What kind of things? Well, things like color, brightness, contrast, alignment, repetition, typography, font sizes, images, line weight, roundness, boldness, proximity, and overall layout. It's a lot to keep track of, but Hartli couldn't be happier.
Go on, type in any website (like hacker news, engadget, slashdot, cute overload, or anything you want), click on the green recommendation button, and see what Hartli thinks would make the site better.
Hartli is in beta testing and currently provides all recommendation services for free until September 1st.
Sorry Slashdot, but he thinks you're aggressive and cynical."
Submission + - Facebook's Project Prism, Corona Could Ease Data Crunch (slashdot.org)
Nerval's Lobster writes: "Facebook recently invited a handful of employers into its headquarters for a more in-depth look at how it handles its flood of data. Part of that involves the social network’s upcoming “Project Prism,” which will allow Facebook to maintain data in multiple data centers around the globe while allowing company engineers to maintain a holistic view of it, thanks to tools such as automatic replication. That added flexibility could help Facebook as it attempts to wrangle an ever-increasing amount of data.
“It allows us to physically separate this massive warehouse of data but still maintain a single logical view of all of it,” is how Wired quotes Jay Parikh, Facebook’s vice president of engineering, as explaining the system to reports. “We can move the warehouses around, depending on cost or performance or technology.”
Facebook has another project, known as Corona, which makes its Apache Hadoop clusters less crash-prone while increasing the number of tasks that can be run on the infrastructure."
“It allows us to physically separate this massive warehouse of data but still maintain a single logical view of all of it,” is how Wired quotes Jay Parikh, Facebook’s vice president of engineering, as explaining the system to reports. “We can move the warehouses around, depending on cost or performance or technology.”
Facebook has another project, known as Corona, which makes its Apache Hadoop clusters less crash-prone while increasing the number of tasks that can be run on the infrastructure."
