Comment Re:WTF (Score 1) 179
Windows XP: Zombie Edition lives! IT'S ALIVE!
Either that or it's only "mostly dead" and MS is giving it a miracle pill.
Comment This is how we lost "force feedback" (Score 2) 148
This is exactly the way "Force Feedback" products got thrown to the wolves. I hope it isn't a similar ending for VR headsets. This stuff has been tried for over a decade.
Heartbleed Turned Against Cyber Criminals 50
Rambo Tribble writes: "In a case of 'live by the sword, die by the sword,' researchers have used the now-infamous Heartlbeed bug in OpenSSL to gain access to black-hat forums. A French researcher named Steven K. is quoted as saying, 'The potential of this vulnerability affecting black-hat services is just enormous.' Reportedly, the criminal-minded sites Darkode and Damagelab have already been compromised."
In related news, U.S. Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel posted an article at Whitehouse.gov yesterday reaffirming that the U.S. government had no prior knowledge of Heartbleed. He said, 'We rely on the Internet and connected systems for much of our daily lives. Our economy would not function without them. Our ability to project power abroad would be crippled if we could not depend on them. For these reasons, disclosing vulnerabilities usually makes sense. We need these systems to be secure as much as, if not more so, than everyone else.'
Reviving a Commodore 64 Computer Using a Raspberry Pi 165
concertina226 (2447056) writes "A group of Commodore fans are working on a new emulator with the ability to turn the Raspberry Pi £30 computer into a fully functioning Commodore 64 fresh from the 1980s. Scott Hutter, creator of the Commodore Pi project, together with a team of developers on Github, are seeking to build a native Commodore 64 operating system that can run on Raspberry Pi. 'The goal will be to include all of the expected emulation features such as SID sound, sprites, joystick connectivity, REU access, etc. In time, even the emulation speed could be changed, as well as additional modern graphics modes,' he writes on his website."
Fruit Flies, Fighter Jets Use Similar Evasive Tactics When Attacked 65
vinces99 writes: "When startled by predators, tiny fruit flies respond like fighter jets – employing screaming-fast banked turns to evade attacks. Researchers at the University of Washington used an array of high-speed video cameras operating at 7,500 frames a second to capture the wing and body motion of flies after they encountered a looming image of an approaching predator (abstract). 'We discovered that fruit flies alter course in less than one one-hundredth of a second, 50 times faster than we blink our eyes, and which is faster than we ever imagined.' In the midst of a banked turn, the flies can roll on their sides 90 degrees or more, almost flying upside down at times, said Florian Muijres, a UW postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the paper. 'These flies normally flap their wings 200 times a second and, in almost a single wing beat, the animal can reorient its body to generate a force away from the threatening stimulus and then continues to accelerate,' he said."
Comment Re:Ah, antimatter (Score 1) 393
That brings to mind an idea: Maybe dark matter is antimatter, and the universe isn't as inscrutable as we think.
Comment Re:This is (Score 1) 274
I think it's hilarious, because it's someone reading in a robot voice, not a robot voice. I am gleeful imagining the staff recording every single submission for a dopey 401 joke.
Somebody submit a manifesto, or something similarly huge.
Comment Re:April Fools stories are gay (Score 1) 1482
"Unwilling to tolerate differences in opinions or beliefs, especially religious beliefs."
The American Heritage Dictionary
I'll see your dictionary, and raise you a politically motivated reference volume decided by fiat. The original "intolerance" was religious intolerance. Easy to forget, I suppose.
If you believe words have only one definition and you command it in a given discussion, you may be gravely mistaken. You are certainly not a useless human being, because there is no such thing outside of the confines of utter bigotry.
Majority of Young American Adults Think Astrology Is a Science 625
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Americans have always had a strange fascination with astrology. First Lady Nancy Reagan famously employed the services of an astrologer after the assassination attempt on her husband. Now UPI reports that according to a new survey by the National Science Foundation, nearly half of all Americans say astrology is either 'very' or 'sort of' scientific. Younger respondents, in particular, were the least likely to regard astrology as unscientific, with 58% of 18 to 24 years olds saying that astrology is scientific (PDF). What's most alarming is that American attitudes about science are moving in the wrong direction. Skepticism of astrology hit an all-time high in 2004, when 66 percent of Americans said astrology was total nonsense. But each year, fewer and fewer respondents have dismissed the connections between star alignment and personality as bunk. Among respondents in the 25 — 44 age group 49% of respondents in the 2012 survey said astrology is either 'very scientific' or 'sort of scientific,' up from 36% in 2010. So what's behind this data? The lead author of the report chapter in question, public opinion specialist John Besley of Michigan State University, cautions that we should probably wait for further data 'to see if it's a real change' before speculating. But, he admits, the apparent increase in astrology belief 'popped out to me when I saw it.'"
Comment Re:Before this turns into a derpfest... (Score 1) 320
Thank you for the sane, intelligible reply, and I hope you get modded up.
China's Government Unveils 'China Operating System' To Great Skepticism 223
redletterdave writes "The government of China is not too fond of foreign mobile operating systems like iOS and Android, so the country cooked up its own homegrown solution: A Linux-based, open-source operating system called the COS, or China Operating System. But consumers have every right to be skeptical; China is using the recent NSA scandal in the U.S. to push its own product. A government-approved mobile operating system, especially in China of all places, reeks of its own backdoor exploits for governmental spying."
Comment Re:Vista/7 (Score 1) 1009
Basically, they brought back the "Program Manager" with icons that require a lot more mouse movement on a desktop system. They undid an interface (start menu) that was going on 20 years old in order to bring back the paradigms of Windows 3.0.
Comment Bitcoin story every day (Score 1) 186
Even when there's nothing to talk about, you can have a Bitcoin story on the Slashdot front page every day.
This isn't even "news for nerds," it's Usenet-style speculation for the terminally bored.
Comment Re:problem is (Score 4, Insightful) 841
Even more fundamentally obvious, the number of toys and troops, and their vast overarching deployments, creates an atmosphere that inevitably leads to wars. This is opportunity presenting itself to the military, and wars of opportunity. Let alone how it benefits the military industrial complex to have our military in such positions of opportunity.
If we have troops deployed globally, as we do now, the likelihood of elective war, even global war, goes up exponentially. It's what keeps such military geopolitics sustainable. In short: Weapons have a tendency to go off. It's what defines them as weapons. The idea of a deterrent force is an oxymoron and a myth.
Why Letting Your Insurance Company Monitor How You Drive Can Be a Good Thing 567
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Kim Gittleson reports at BBC that car insurance firms like Progressive are trying to convince consumers that letting them monitor their driving behavior is actually a good thing. They say that the future of car insurance is not just being able to monitor individual drivers to give them lower prices, but also to make them better drivers. 'Now that we can observe directly how people drive, we think this will change the way insurance works,' says Dave Pratt, who says that Progressive has more than a trillion seconds of driving data from 1.6 million customers. '18-year-old guys pay a lot for insurance, but some 18-year-olds are really safe drivers and they deserve a better deal.' Better big data technologies, like the telematic driving data collected by car companies (PDF) or even information gathered from social media profiles, can help augment that risk profile. 'If I'm a driver that doesn't drive that frequently, and I have a pattern that would indicate that I drive more carefully than an average person with my profile, then I may be able to save 30-40% on my car insurance, and that's pretty significant,' says Joe Reifel. For now, using big data analytics for insurers is still in the early stages. Only 2% of the U.S. car insurance market offers an insurance product based on monitoring driving, but that proportion is projected to grow to around 10-15% of the market by 2017. And other countries, like Italy and the U.K., are already using the data to analyze not just risk profiles but also to determine who is at fault in car accidents. The future, most analysts agree is create a continuous feedback loop between insurers and consumers, so that consumers will react to the big data analyses that insurers perform and change their behavior accordingly. 'Bad drivers will at some point need to improve their driving or accept [having] to pay for the real risk they represent,' says Jacques Amselem."
