Comment Re:ISP idiocy (Score 1) 312
Only if you assume that the ISP isn't filtering egress already... which is doubtful.
Comment Correlation does not imply causation. (Score 2) 74
An algorithm scanned through images of works of art, and identified similarities. And that means what?
Comment In other words, Don't Pay for Promises. (Score 5, Insightful) 208
Pay for Value.
Comment 5th amendment doesn't apply outside of court. (Score 1) 871
If the 5th amendment applied during interrogation, then no one could confess. Every case would go to trial. You can refuse to talk to police. Miranda rights apply when talking to police, AFTER GETTING ARRESTED. The summary is that there is nothing that you can say to help yourself until you get to court. By saying nothing there is nothing that the prosecution can hold against you.
Comment Re:"Human Interest bloat..." (Score 1) 349
Indeed. What I find aggravating is that they show these human interest stories for people that fail. And don't show the successful contestants.
Comment Just another reason to backup all media (Score 1) 583
This is exactly the kind of thing that the "One Legal copy" exemption of the copyright laws was included to prevent.
I am not up on latest xbox game copying techniques, but I am sure it is not easy for the average user... if possible at all.
Submission + - No passport for Britons refusing mass-surveillance
UpnAtom writes: "From the And
you thought Sweden was bad dept:
People who refuse to give up their bank records, tax records & details of any benefits they've claimed and the records of their car movements for the last year, or refuse to submit to an interrogation on whether they are the same person that this mountain of data belongs to will be denied passports from March 26th.
The Blair Govt has already admitted that this and other data will be cross-linked so that the Home Office and other officials can spy on the everyday lives of innocent Britons.
Britons were already the most spied upon nation in Western Europe. Data-mining through this unprecedented level of mass-surveillance allows any future British govt to leapfrog even countries like China and North Korea."
People who refuse to give up their bank records, tax records & details of any benefits they've claimed and the records of their car movements for the last year, or refuse to submit to an interrogation on whether they are the same person that this mountain of data belongs to will be denied passports from March 26th.
The Blair Govt has already admitted that this and other data will be cross-linked so that the Home Office and other officials can spy on the everyday lives of innocent Britons.
Britons were already the most spied upon nation in Western Europe. Data-mining through this unprecedented level of mass-surveillance allows any future British govt to leapfrog even countries like China and North Korea."
Submission + - Improving software help (and user's lives)
develinflex writes: There are generally two kinds of questions a user might have while seeking help on a software application.
1. "What does something do? What is something?" type of questions.
2. "How can something be accomplished?" type of questions.
Providing information 1 is trivial — you just need to iterate through all menus, widgets and components on the screen, and describe them one by one. You can also have things like tooltips, whatsthis widgets, etc. that can be associated with every displayed widget.
How does one give a systematic list of the second type of questions? The problem is tricky because the keywords users might use to search for help might not be the exact technical terms used in the manual. For example, users may "know" that they need to use a text-box, but may not know that the thing to be used is called a text-box.
How would you, as a developer, arrange information in a way that is easy to discover for end users who know only their functional requirements? What other techniques can you use to speed up (I'm extremely sorry...) "software-usage knowledge discovery"?
1. "What does something do? What is something?" type of questions.
2. "How can something be accomplished?" type of questions.
Providing information 1 is trivial — you just need to iterate through all menus, widgets and components on the screen, and describe them one by one. You can also have things like tooltips, whatsthis widgets, etc. that can be associated with every displayed widget.
How does one give a systematic list of the second type of questions? The problem is tricky because the keywords users might use to search for help might not be the exact technical terms used in the manual. For example, users may "know" that they need to use a text-box, but may not know that the thing to be used is called a text-box.
How would you, as a developer, arrange information in a way that is easy to discover for end users who know only their functional requirements? What other techniques can you use to speed up (I'm extremely sorry...) "software-usage knowledge discovery"?
Submission + - British Military Deploys Skynet
An anonymous reader writes: The BBC is reporting that the United Kingdom is about to launch Skynet 5, a system that will allow faster communications for UK and allied forces around the world. 'It's going to provide five times the amount of capacity that the previous system provided, and allow the military to do things they just haven't been able to do in the past,' said one developer. The Governor of California is reportedly standing by.
Submission + - Political preferences and free software
00_NOP writes: "HateMyTory is the world's first political rating site and occasionally gets blasted or promoted by British bloggers on either side of the political spectrum. But here's something even more intriguing ... when the right come visiting they hate the site but they are disproportionally likely to be users of free software, whether that is just Firefox on top of their Windows box, or all the way with some Linux distro. But when the left rally to the cause they are more likely than not to be proprietary software users, albeit with a big bias towards Apple. If Microsoft's defenders think free software is the road to socialism, why don't the left seem to agree? As a leftie, and a free software advocate, I find this pretty puzzling."
Management 'Scared' by Open Source 373
A discussion panel at EclipseCon exposed how managers are freaking out over open source. Apparently a disconnect exists between managers who set corporate open source policies and developers supposed to follow them, but who end up covering their tracks to make it seem like they are not using open source. Developers, though, end up using open source because of its ubiquity and not using it 'puts them at a competitive disadvantage because their competitors are.' And the Lawyers are in a panic.
Submission + - satelites repairing satelites
An anonymous reader writes: An experimental pair of satelites have been launched to test if satelites repairing satelites is a practical idea. the two experimental models launched by the branch of the U.S. military that created the internet are planned to do eight experimental missions where they will dock and exchange batteries, fuel and other parts. http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/03/09/tech -orbitalexpress-20070309.html
