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Government

Comcast Executives Appear To Share Cozy Relationships With Regulators 63

v3rgEz (125380) writes A month before Comcast's announcement of a $45B takeover of rival Time-Warner, Comcast's top lobbyist invited the US government's top antitrust regulators to share the company's VIP box at the Sochi Olympics. A Freedom of Information Act request from Muckrock reveals that the regulators reluctantly declined, saying "it sounds like so much fun" but the pesky "rules folks" would frown on it, instead suggesting a more private dinner later.

Comment Who says you have to upgrade to Windows 8? (Score 1) 641

My parents are having me upgrade their desktop to Windows 7 right now, and I haven't talked to anyone who has used 7 that would rather go back to XP. 7 seems to be the most popular version of Windows ever, judging by users' opinions of it, and MS will feature extended support for it until 2020.

Comment Re:Which is why I use OpenDNS, or Google, or (Score 1) 349

That's because the entire 192.168 IP range isn't routable on the Internet:

# Query terms are ambiguous. The query is assumed to be:
# "n 192.168.2.100"
#
# Use "?" to get help.
#

#
# The following results may also be obtained via:
# http://whois.arin.net/rest/net...
#

NetRange: 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255
CIDR: 192.168.0.0/16
OriginAS:
NetName: PRIVATE-ADDRESS-CBLK-RFC1918-IANA-RESERVED
NetHandle: NET-192-168-0-0-1
Parent: NET-192-0-0-0-0
NetType: IANA Special Use
Comment: These addresses are in use by many millions of independently operated networks, which might be as small as a single computer connected to a home gateway, and are automatically configured in hundreds of millions of devices. They are only intended for use within a private context and traffic that needs to cross the Internet will need to use a different, unique address.

You guys are both newbs.

Comment Why do robots have to be bipedal? (Score 1) 76

I mean, it's obvious that they're REALLY BAD at it. Hardly any animals are bipeds, in comparison to the amount of quadrupeds, especially.

Why not play to robots' areas of strength and just stick with wheels/treads/rotors/wings/etc., and worry about more advanced forms of locomotion later? I understand that humans want robots that look and act like humans, I suppose, but how about coming up with more practical designs?

Comment Sorry, but this is not new news (Score 1) 141

Guardian article from 2008 called 'Captcha is broken, now what?', which in turn references a Captcha-breaking algorithm that was created in 2005, "and demonstrated it by posting automated comments to nearly 100 blogs to demonstrate their vulnerability."

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/aug/28/internet.captcha

Comment Oblig. Simpson's reference (Score 4, Funny) 1059

(One of Castro's workers tells him some men with a trillion dollar bill are here to see him.)

Mr. Burns: Oh, so the island's not for sale, eh? Well, will you at least permit us to live in your socialist paradise?
Castro (in disbelief): You talking about Cuba?
Mr. Burns: All we ask is preferential treatment because of my fabulous wealth!
[Burns holds the trillion dollar bill up.]
Castro: May I see?
Mr. Burns: Ho ho ho, see with your eyes, not with your hands!
Castro: Please, we are all amigos here!
Homer: Mr. Burns, I *think* we can trust the president of *Cuba*...
Mr. Burns: [hands it to Castro, and waits a couple of seconds.] Now, give it back.
Castro: Give what back?
Mr. Burns: D'oh...

(The three men are on a crudely made raft in the middle of the ocean headed back home.)

Homer: It's hard to believe there's a place worse than America, but we found it!
Mr. Burns: Yes, I, too, feel renewed appreciation for the good old US of A. Oppression and harassment are a small price to pay to live in the land of the free.
Smithers: Sir, aren't you facing some serious jail time?
Mr. Burns: Well, if it's a crime to love one's country, then I'm guilty. And if it's a crime to steal a trillion dollars from our government and hand it over to communist Cuba, then I'm guilty of that too. And if it's a crime to bribe a jury, then so help me, I'll soon be guilty of that!
Homer: God bless America!

--"The Trouble with Trillions"

Comment I call BS (Score 5, Informative) 240

Your hands are full of very small bones. It's very easy to break your hand by punching something hard and dense (such as a skull or face for instance).

If you want to strike someone in the face, it's smarter to use other parts of the body such as your knee, elbow or to use an open hand strike (such as a palm strike). That way you have the edge of a very long bone delivering the blow.

Comment Smells as a "single unit" (Score 4, Interesting) 82

This is one of the differences between humans and animals, such as dogs, for instance. Dogs smell each component separately.

This is why they make such good detectors for things like explosives or drugs -- they are still capable of pulling the "bomb" smell out of a complex mix of smells or when the smell is deliberately being masked, thanks in part to their highly adapted vomeronasal organ, also called the Jacobson's organ.

http://www.whole-dog-journal.com/issues/7_11/features/Canine-Sense-of-Smell_15668-1.html

Idle

French Bees Produce Blue and Green Honey 64

jones_supa writes "Since August, beekeepers around the town of Ribeauville in the region of Alsace, France have seen their bees starting to produce honey in an odd blue or green color. Mystified, the beekeepers embarked on an investigation and discovered that a biogas plant 4 km away has been processing waste from a plant producing colorful M&M candies. Subsequently the bees had been carrying the waste to their nests. Agrivalor, the company operating the biogas plant, said it had tried to address the problem after being notified of it by the beekeepers. 'We discovered the problem at the same time they did. We quickly put in place a procedure to stop it,' told Philippe Meinrad, co-manager of Agrivalor."

Comment Re:Last mile (Score 3, Interesting) 230

// So Google did get to the front doors of all the people in Kansas City, and Charter and AT&T couldn't stop them, because the city agreed to it. //

As a Kansas City-area resident, I'm afraid this is not the case. I don't know anyone that lives in Kansas City, KS that currently has access to Google Fiber services, or that has seen any trucks or workers in their neighborhood.

Google has been very short on public details with this entire project, and this launch that the article is referring to has to refer to a very limited and localized deployment.

Keep in mind that physical installation did not even begin until this past February: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytjn-5_li-I

'A Google spokeswoman would not say whether the announcement actually means somebody in Kansas City will finally get a light-speed connection next week.

"We're excited to announce more information Google Fiber next week," said Jenna Wandres. "We haven't elaborated on what arriving means."'
http://www.kansascity.com/2012/07/18/3711326/google-fiber-to-make-july-26-announcement.html#storylink=misearch

I'll be curious to eventually find out who has access to it, exactly, and how long it'll be before any significant portions of the city are lit up.

Censorship

Submission + - The New York Bill that Would Ban Anonymous Online Speech (time.com)

Kargan writes: Watching faceless online passerby troll bloggers or mock fellow scribblers can be a drag, but what if legislators’ answer to online ne’er-do-wells was to ban anonymous comments from websites entirely? That’s what the state of New York is planning to do in identical bills — S.6779 and A.8688 – proposed by the New York State Assembly that would “amend the civil rights law” in order to “[protect] a person’s right to know who is behind an anonymous internet posting.”

The bill would require a web administrator to “upon request remove any comments posted on his or her web site by an anonymous poster unless such anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post and confirms that his or her IP address, legal name, and home address are accurate.” By “web site,” the bill means just what it seems to: Any New York-based website, including “social networks, blogs forums, message boards or any other discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages.”

Read more: http://techland.time.com/2012/05/24/the-new-york-bill-that-would-ban-anonymous-online-speech/#ixzz1vol0fxcz

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