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Comment Re:Gimme a keyboard (Score 1) 67

by neilo_1701D (#47350635) Attached to: Ars Takes an Early Look At the Privacy-Centric Blackphone

connecting to multiple email accounts (multiple Exchange account at that) and having a consolidated inbox was probably the major reason for the switch

iOS & Android still can't match the BB for email support so I can't fathom what you are talking about here.>

That's certainly true now; my new BB Curve has all those features too.

But I'm talking a few years ago; in the Bold 9000 era. BBOS at that time (4 point something or other) could only do email via BES; one account only and no POP3 / IMAP (unless you had a 3rd party client; even then it got messy because of no unified inbox and increased battery drain). The iPhone with iOS4 and most Android phones at the time could do unlimited email accounts - and iPhone could have multiple Exchange accounts, which was quite unique for the day.

As to all you other unquoted but acknowledged points (communications, security, VPN, ...) I am in total agreement.

Comment Re:Gimme a keyboard (Score 1) 67

by neilo_1701D (#47349311) Attached to: Ars Takes an Early Look At the Privacy-Centric Blackphone

The idea that serious people want a physical keyboard is something that even people in the Blackberry boardroom no longer believe in. At our firm, BBs disappeared almost overnight as soon as corporate mail was made available on iPhone and Android..

I've seen that too; the mass exodus from BB to iPhone/Android. The full touchscreen was probably the shiny reason to move away; connecting to multiple email accounts (multiple Exchange account at that) and having a consolidated inbox was probably the major reason for the switch, however. From an IT Administration standpoint, the elimination of the BES because EAS (Exchange ActiveSync) is good enough for maybe 90% of organizations was a primary factor: no more buying extra BES licenses when someone new comes on board.

Comment Re:Seems like a 180 from their previous views (Score 1) 193

by neilo_1701D (#47307201) Attached to: First Phone Out of Microsoft-Nokia -- and It's an Android

This particular phone was well along the development schedule when the MS-Nokia deal came along. Sure, it's been Microsoft'd in terms of UI, but whoopty-do.

The bigger question is what happens with future generations of the Nokia X: Will it continue as an Android phone, or transition to a Windows Phone?

Comment A biscuit factory (Score 1) 310

The "only" place I could fix my system control code was sitting on a chair right next to the oven's output cooling fans. Lots of snacking on nice, fresh biscuits :)

Plenty of time spent in other snack food factories, and lots of other stories (eg. packaging machine failure left me frantically rebooting an NT4 system whilst it was raining corn chips from the overflowing scale above me).

Comment Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys (Score 3, Interesting) 323

Old story from way back; a building has been found on the moon that contains a machine that kills people in many different ways throughout the strange building but always consistently. Almost like a mouse in a maze, the scientists figure out that if they can get through this death trap and map each method of death along the way they should be able to get further each time and eventually manage to travel out the other side. Of course it could take many lives to accomplish this so they devise a method of teleporting a copy of someone from the earth to the moon and taking a "backup" copy that shares memories with their counterpart so that when that doppelganger dies there is still a version left alive earth-side.

The only problem is that the sheer horror of each death causes the surviving copy to be driven insane, the human mind just not able to cope, that is until they find the reckless Al Barker who's courted death all his life. It's only then that the research makes any headway.

Submission + - Publishers to remove 100s of computer-generated gibberish conference proceedings (nature.com)

Submitted by savuporo
savuporo writes: The publishers Springer and IEEE are removing more than 120 papers from their subscription services after a French researcher discovered that the works were computer-generated nonsense. Over the past two years, computer scientist Cyril Labbé of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, has catalogued computer-generated papers that made it into more than 30 published conference proceedings between 2008 and 2013. Among the works were, for example, a paper published as a proceeding from the 2013 International Conference on Quality, Reliability, Risk, Maintenance, and Safety Engineering, held in Chengdu, China. The authors of the paper, entitled ‘TIC: a methodology for the construction of e-commerce’, write in the abstract that they “concentrate our efforts on disproving that spreadsheets can be made knowledge-based, empathic, and compact”. Sokal has opened a completely new avenue for science.

Submission + - Curiosity Rover may have brought dozens of microbes to Mars (nature.com)

Submitted by bmahersciwriter
bmahersciwriter writes: Despite rigorous pre-flight cleaning, swabbing of the Curiosity Rover just prior to liftoff revealed some 377 strains of bacteria.
"In the lab, scientists exposed the microbes to desiccation, UV exposure, cold and pH extremes. Nearly 11% of the 377 strains survived more than one of these severe conditions. Thirty-one per cent of the resistant bacteria did not form tough, protective spore coats; the researchers suspect that they used other biochemical means of protection, such as metabolic changes."
While the risk of contaminating the red planet are unknown, knowing the types of strains that may have survived pre-flight cleaning may help rule out biological 'discoveries' if and when NASA carries out it's plans to return a soil sample from Mars.

Submission + - How Rising Seas Could Sink Nuclear Plants On The East Coast (huffingtonpost.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: "During the 1970s and 1980s, when many nuclear reactors were first built, most operators estimated that seas would rise at a slow, constant rate. That is, if the oceans rose a fraction of an inch one year, they could be expected to rise by the same amount the next year and every year in the future.

But the seas are now rising much faster than they did in the past, largely due to climate change, which accelerates thermal expansion and melts glaciers and ice caps. Sea levels rose an average of 8 inches between 1880 and 2009, or about 0.06 inches per year. But in the last 20 years, sea levels have risen an average of 0.13 inches per year — about twice as fast.

And it's only getting worse. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has laid out four different projections for estimated sea level rise by 2100. Even the agency's best-case scenario assumes that sea levels will rise at least 8.4 inches by the end of this century. NOAA's worst-case scenario, meanwhile, predicts that the oceans will rise nearly 7 feet in the next 86 years.

But most nuclear power facilities were built well before scientists understood just how high sea levels might rise in the future. And for power plants, the most serious threat is likely to come from surges during storms. Higher sea levels mean that flooding will travel farther inland, creating potential hazards in areas that may have previously been considered safe. During Superstorm Sandy, for example, flooding threatened the water intake systems at the Oyster Creek and Salem nuclear power plants in New Jersey. As a safety precaution, both plants were powered down. But even when a plant is not operating, the spent fuel stored on-site, typically uranium, will continue to emit heat and must be cooled using equipment that relies on the plant's own power. Flooding can cause a loss of power, and in serious conditions it can damage backup generators. Without a cooling system, reactors can overheat and damage the facility to the point of releasing radioactive material."

Submission + - The Maximum iPhone 5 Battery Life (appstoredownload.com)

Submitted by wallstreetfool
wallstreetfool writes: While surfing some Apple Forums and Message Boards this week, I noticed a common recurring theme among the iPhone loyalists: The poor battery life of iPhone 5. Although the observations varied from user-to-user, everyone seemed to agree that the battery life of iPhone 5 isn’t what Apple markets it to be.

Submission + - Almost 100 arrested in worldwide swoop on Blackshades malware (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by MattSparkes
MattSparkes writes: Law enforcement around the world has teamed-up to arrest 97 for buying/using Blackshades malware, which can remotely seize control of a victim's computer, access documents, record keystrokes and even activate their webcam to take surreptitious pictures and video. It is also able to encrypt files in order to extract a ransom for their release. Blackshades RAT is a commercial product costing less than $200 which was marketed as a tool to test network security. However, it is widely used by hackers and was even said by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to have been used against Syrian activists by the government in 2012.

Submission + - Fujitsu is Growing Radiation-free Lettuce in Japan's Fukushima Prefecture (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by Taffykay
Taffykay writes: Tech giant Fujitsu has opened an organic lettuce farm in Japan's Fukushima prefecture. Blending agriculture, technology, and medicine in a former microchip factory, the company has developed a new variety of organic lettuce that is not only lower in potassium and nitrates than standard varieties, but is also radiation-free.

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