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Comment Re:This is the modern reality. (Score 2) 189

Yup. "State of the art" keeps moving forward in malware. It may well outpace security research. That's the reality. Who's next? Who can best address this issue? Do we need to fundamentally redesign computer systems with a security first mindset, and how long will that last against tomorrow's threats?

I don't know who started the cyberwar, but I do know that the West is fully committed to perpetrating it, especially the US. Even against our own people. This was bound to come round and bite us in the ass. You reap what you sow.

Comment And the drumbeat goes on (Score -1, Troll) 637

Another pathetic attempt to override political sensibility with claims of "I know better." People who don't think climate change is a big deal are now somehow deficient. People who deal with and process global warming *politically* are "deniers" and out of touch with reality. What utterly hysterical nonsense will we hear next from our self-proclaimed, much wiser overlords? When will anyone realize that to get something done on a global scale, you need to build a *consensus* with humanity, not look down your nose at them.

Politics is the way global change gets done, not the crude demands of the cognoscenti. For example, Barack Obama got something (very little, in fact, but something) done with China. That's the way it happens. I wish the self-proclaimed cognoscenti would stop making themselves look like they lack the sensibilities of an average, petulant teenager. It's getting annoying.

Comment Re:This is a joke, right? (Score 1, Informative) 637

Climate change "deniers" is a misnomer. Everyone with a lick of sense knows we're in a rising temperature period. We're coming out of an ice age. We all know the climate changes, and may change for the warmer. Remember this next time you use a politically calculated term that doesn't describe most of the people involved.

Comment Re:Not shared by everyone (Score 5, Informative) 637

Hate to tell you, but you're stereotyping. There are plenty of skeptics who simply think the scientists involved have no good idea how to model the climate and that their attempts are crude at best, dismal at worst. The climate does seem to be getting warmer, but it doesn't take much to prove that. Everything else is half-baked, IMHO. Do we need to take drastic measures that will destroy the Western world's economy? Probably not.

Most people in support of drastic intervention fail to grasp that we have no real alternative to fossil fuels in the pipe. Furthermore, renewables research isn't moving fast enough for their sensibilities, and they tend to overestimate the possibility of an imminent solution. A very common aversion to nuclear power alongside global warming extremism just puts in the last nail. We should go nuclear. That would fix carbon emissions. Most warming interventionists don't want that either.

Still, I'm glad the renewables research is happening. Fossil fuels are decidedly finite. So is nuclear. We need a means to survive, I'm just doubtful that we need to flail about with solutions that may cause more harm than good.

Sincerely,

Not anti-science, not a creationist, never owned a gun, am very good with math, and independent as far as political leanings go. Don't stuff me into your box. Thanks.

Comment Re:Oh mozilla (Score 4, Informative) 351

I just stuck it into "Additional Tools and Features" like "Share this page," "Hello," and "Apps." I took "Forget" off the main toolbar, where it intruded one day, and stuffed it in the hamburger menu, as a feature that I rarely going to use.

Like everything they're adding, it inconvenienced me for all of three seconds.

Now, it does raise questions as to whether the Mozilla philosophy is still a "lightweight browser that you can customize with extensions," and including these features by default defeats the feeling that you have a choice of adding potentially unnecessary functionality by extensions. Lightweight does not seem to be the objective any longer.

For the people for whom this is an ideology, they are very irritated.

Government

Presidential Candidate Lincoln Chaffee Proposes That US Go Metric 830

New submitter Applehu Akbar writes: The good news is that for the first time in years, a candidate in the next presidential cycle has proposed completing our transition to the metric system. Though unfortunately it's Lincoln Chaffee, let's all hope that this long-standing nerd issue gets into the 2016 debate because of this. Warning: Lame CNN autoplaying video.
Security

Cybersecurity and the Tylenol Murders 74

HughPickens.com writes: Cindy Cohn writes at EFF that when a criminal started lacing Tylenol capsules with cyanide in 1982, Johnson & Johnson quickly sprang into action to ensure consumer safety. It increased its internal production controls, recalled the capsules, offered an exchange for tablets, and within two months started using triple-seal tamper-resistant packaging. Congress ultimately passed an anti-tampering law but the focus of the response from both the private and the public sector was on ensuring that consumers remained safe and secure, rather than on catching the perpetrator. Indeed, the person who did the tampering was never caught.

According to Cohn the story of the Tylenol murders comes to mind as Congress considers the latest cybersecurity and data breach bills. To folks who understand computer security and networks, it's plain that the key problem are our vulnerable infrastructure and weak computer security, much like the vulnerabilities in Johnson & Johnson's supply chain in the 1980s. As then, the failure to secure our networks, the services we rely upon, and our individual computers makes it easy for bad actors to step in and "poison" our information. The way forward is clear: We need better incentives for companies who store our data to keep it secure. "Yet none of the proposals now in Congress are aimed at actually increasing the safety of our data. Instead, the focus is on "information sharing," a euphemism for more surveillance of users and networks," writes Cohn. "These bills are not only wrongheaded, they seem to be a cynical ploy to use the very real problems of cybersecurity to advance a surveillance agenda, rather than to actually take steps to make people safer." Congress could step in and encourage real security for users—by creating incentives for greater security, a greater downside for companies that fail to do so and by rewarding those companies who make the effort to develop stronger security. "It's as if the answer for Americans after the Tylenol incident was not to put on tamper-evident seals, or increase the security of the supply chain, but only to require Tylenol to "share" its customer lists with the government and with the folks over at Bayer aspirin," concludes Cohn. "We wouldn't have stood for such a wrongheaded response in 1982, and we shouldn't do so now."
Biotech

Sex-Switched Mosquitoes May Help In Fight Against Diseases 150

cstacy writes: Only the female mosquitoes bite and transmit viral diseases such as Dengue Fever. Scientists have finally discovered the elusive genetic switch called Nix, that determines the sex of these blood sucking insects, and hope to selectively eliminate females to control the spread of diseases. "Nix provides us with exciting opportunities to harness mosquito sex in the fight against infectious diseases because maleness is the ultimate disease-refractory trait," explained Zhijian Jake Tu, an affiliate of the Fralin Life Science Institute and a biochemistry professor from Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Earth

How Close Are We To Engineering the Climate? 319

merbs writes The scientists had whipped themselves into a frenzy. Gathered in a stuffy conference room in the bowels of a hotel in Berlin, scores of respected climate researchers were arguing about a one-page document that had tentatively been christened the "Berlin Declaration." It proposed ground rules for conducting experiments to explore how we might artificially cool the Earth—planet hacking, basically. This is the story of scientists' first major international meeting to tackle geoengineering. It’s most commonly called geoengineering. Think Bond-villain-caliber schemes but with better intentions. It’s a highly controversial field that studies ideas like launching high-flying jets to dust the skies with sulfur in order to block out a small fraction of the solar rays entering the atmosphere, or sending a fleet of drones across the ocean to spray seawater into clouds to make them brighter and thus reflect more sunlight. Those are two of the most discussed proposals for using technology to chill the planet and combat climate change, and each would ostensibly cost a few billion dollars a year—peanuts in the scheme of the global economy. We’re about to see the dawn of the first real-world experiments designed to test ideas like these, but first, the scientists wanted to agree on a code of ethics—how to move forward without alarming the public or breaking any laws.

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Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?

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