Comment Re:Links (Score 3, Informative) 80
And for the do-it-yourselfer:
Comment too many patents (Score 1) 96
It would be nice if there were a way to limit the number of patents a company or individual was allowed to own. If companies couldn't stockpile their patents then they would be forced to limit their patents to the higher quality ones. Of course any such law would have to be written carefully to avoid the obvious loopholes companies would surely exploit.
Comment The plot (Score 5, Funny) 102
A sodium atom and a potassium atom are walking down the street when suddenly the sodium atom stops with a concerned look. "I just lost an electron" he said. "Are you sure?" asked the potassium atom. The sodium atom replied with, "Yeah, I'm positive."
Submission + - Washington Post fires mobile team (huffingtonpost.com) 1
imac.usr writes: The Huffington Post is reporting that The Washington Post has gone through yet another round of layoffs, but this time instead of cutting editorial positions, they're apparently cutting IT positions, specifically in the mobile applications department. According to Washington, DC media blog FishbowlDC, 54 people, including the General Manager of Mobile and Director of Mobile Products were given the axe on Valentine's Day. A particularly damning quote from the FishbowlDC article: '“[CIO and VP Shaliesh] Prakash thinks these are ‘inefficiencies’ – that is the exact word he uses for human beings who are not useful according to him,” said a source who spoke only on condition of anonymity. “Get rid of experienced people to save money, under the garb of streamlining is the new trend inside the Post.”'
Given that mobile products seem somewhat more likely to succeed than printed newspapers, this seems a strange decision at best.
Given that mobile products seem somewhat more likely to succeed than printed newspapers, this seems a strange decision at best.
Comment Re:One death due to a robot is worse than... (Score 1) 231
I wish I had mod points for you. This is something I've realized for a while and is, at least in my mind, the number one reason that self driving cars won't become a reality for a very long time.
Comment Re:Ok (Score 1) 365
Depending on your definition of "deliver", I think cron may be in violation of this patent.
Comment Re:... and I thought E is going to replace X11 (Score 1) 455
E17 should be out in a few days. But even so, E17 runs on top of X11 rather than running as a replacement. Maybe if Wayland takes off, Enlightenment can be ported to run there instead of X11, but we'll have to wait to see where things go from here.
Comment $100 billion (Score 1, Flamebait) 230
Running high speed lines across the nation is expensive — to the tune of $100 billion dollars a year.
Isn't that about what we pay to China every year just to cover the interest on the money our country has borrowed from them? At least all that interest money is being put to good use.
Comment Re:They shall call it... (Score 4, Funny) 150
Given that the scientist's last name is Morita, I figured they call it Moratorium, although with a name like that it might be a while before he discovers another one.
Comment Re:Not realistic (Score 3, Informative) 157
What I'd much prefer is if you could allow or deny individually
If you can root your phone and install Cyanogenmod then you will gain this ability.
Comment Re:here comes another round of litigation (Score 1) 675
What Apple does is a little different. They make their own hardware, so (at least in my opinion) they are justified in locking down that hardware. In Microsoft's case, they ony make the software, but are trying to dictate to every other hardware manufacturer how their hardware should be built. If Microsoft made their own hardware, I would have no problem with them locking it down. It's them acting like they own all the hardware companies out there that really irritates me.
Comment Easily avoidable (Score 3, Insightful) 308
This kind of tracking is easy to avoid. Just do like me and never post on discussion forums like this one.
Comment Re:That's one small step for ? (Score 4, Informative) 116
My understanding is that what he meant to say was "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind". That one little extra word makes the phrase make a lot more sense.
GSM Decryption Published 299
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that German encryption expert Karsten Nohl says that he has deciphered and published the 21-year-old GSM algorithm, the secret code used to encrypt most of the world's digital mobile phone calls, in what he called an attempt to expose weaknesses in the security system used by about 3.5 billion of the 4.3 billion wireless connections across the globe. Others have cracked the A5/1 encryption technology used in GSM before, but their results have remained secret. 'This shows that existing GSM security is inadequate,' Nohl told about 600 people attending the Chaos Communication Congress. 'We are trying to push operators to adopt better security measures for mobile phone calls.' The GSM Association, the industry group based in London that devised the algorithm and represents wireless operators, called Mr. Nohl's efforts illegal and said they overstated the security threat to wireless calls. 'This is theoretically possible but practically unlikely,' says Claire Cranton, a GSM spokeswoman, noting that no one else had broken the code since its adoption. 'What he is doing would be illegal in Britain and the United States. To do this while supposedly being concerned about privacy is beyond me.' Simon Bransfield-Garth, the chief executive of Cellcrypt, says Nohl's efforts could put sophisticated mobile interception technology — limited to governments and intelligence agencies — within the reach of any reasonable well-funded criminal organization. 'This will reduce the time to break a GSM call from weeks to hours,' Bransfield-Garth says. 'We expect as this further develops it will be reduced to minutes.'"
Comment Congratulations (Score 5, Insightful) 411
Congratulations to the Haiku team. Back when Be closed its doors, I remember there were several projects to recreate the OS, but most people didn't expect any of them to succeed. This announcement proves that wrong. BeOS was a fantastic OS and with Haiku making strides toward a stable release, the legacy can live on. Although it's taken a while to get this far, writing a full operating system from scratch takes a long time. Even large companies with dedicated teams generally take 5+ years to build a new OS, so 8 years for a group of volunteers to release a working system is quite reasonable.
Once again, congratulations and thanks for all the hard work you've put in over the years. Although only an alpha, this release is quite stable and usable. Your efforts have certainly not gone unnoticed.
