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Comment Re:They tried to raise prices 20% unnanounced (Score 1) 392

by iONiUM (#48270833) Attached to: Cutting the Cord? Time Warner Loses 184,000 TV Subscribers In One Quarter

I'm with Rogers (Canada), and I've had over 5 modems fail over the last 10 years. This is in various houses, and various locations. The most obvious cause of failure was when it was in a humid basement. But in many other cases, there was no obvious cause (it was on an upper floor, very dry and ideal conditions).

In any case, I "rent" my modem, but every year I call and complain and they take the rent fee off. As such, whenever it breaks, I just swap it for free for another one.

They don't make electronics like they used to, I guess.

Submission + - Confidence Shaken In Open Source Security Idealism (bloomberg.com) 1

Submitted by iONiUM
iONiUM writes: According to a few news articles, the general public has taken notice of all the recent security breaches in open source software. From the article: 'Hackers have shaken the free-software movement that once symbolized the Web’s idealism. Several high-profile attacks in recent months exploited security flaws found in the “open-source” software created by volunteers collaborating online, building off each other’s work.'

While it's true that open source means you can review the actual code to ensure there's no data-theft, loggers, or glaring security holes, that idealism doesn't really help out most people who simply don't have time, or the knowledge, to do it. As such, the trust is left to the open source community, and is that really so different than leaving it to a corporation with closed source?

Submission + - Canada to Bypass Keystone with Oil Pipeline To the Atlantic

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Bloomberg reports that Canadians have come up with an all-Canadian route to get crude oil sands from Alberta to a refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick that will give Canada’s oil-sands crude supertanker access to the same Louisiana and Texas refineries Keystone was meant to supply. The pipeline, built by Energy East, will cost $10.7 billion and could be up and running by 2018. Its 4,600-kilometer path, taking advantage of a vast length of existing and underused natural gas pipeline, would wend through six provinces and four time zones. "It would be Keystone on steroids, more than twice as long and carrying a third more crude," writes Bloomberg. "And if you’re a fed-up Canadian, like Prime Minister Stephen Harper, there’s a bonus: Obama can’t do a single thing about it." So confident is TransCanada Corp., the chief backer of both Keystone and Energy East, of success that Alex Pourbaix, the executive in charge, spoke of the cross-Canada line as virtually a done deal. “With one project,” Energy East will give Alberta’s oil sands not only an outlet to “eastern Canadian markets but to global markets,” says Pourbaix. “And we’ve done so at scale, with a 1.1 million barrel per day pipeline, which will go a long way to removing the specter of those big differentials for many years to come.”

The pipeline will also prove a blow to environmentalists who have made central to the anti-Keystone arguments the concept that if Keystone can be stopped, most of that polluting heavy crude will stay in the ground. With 168 billion proven barrels of oil, though, Canada’s oil sands represent the third-largest oil reserves in the world, and that oil is likely to find its way to shore one way or another. “It’s always been clear that denying it or slowing Keystone wasn’t going to stop the flow of Canadian oil,” says Michael Levi. What Energy East means for the Keystone XL pipeline remains to be seen. “Maybe this will be a wake up call to President Obama and U.S. policymakers to say ‘Hmmm we’re going to get shut out of not just the energy, but all those jobs that are going to go into building that pipeline. Now they are all going to go into Canada," says Aaron Task. “This is all about ‘You snooze, you lose.’”

Comment I own the game (Score 1) 93

by iONiUM (#47897871) Attached to: Early Reviews of Destiny: Unfulfilled Potential

I bought the game when it came out (digital download, who needs line ups or EB?) and I agree with the reviews.

I play FPS on both console and PC so ignoring the argument people like to have, which isn't the issue, the game is lacking. The thing is it actually has a lot of potential, and I really want to like it, but its just.. Boring. If they had of had more variety of quests, a real open world, any sort of story, and public match making for campaign it would have been a lot better. A shame, really.

Submission + - BGP Exceeds 512k: Major Sites Go Down (nationalpost.com)

Submitted by iONiUM
iONiUM writes: As reported by many news articles, the total routing table for the internet exceeded 512k on Tuesday. This caused many older routers to fail, and resulted in major websites being very slow, or completely inaccessible. Hopefully the lack of access to cat pictures woke people up to the preparation and work needed to keep the internet functioning, and the need to ensure IPv6 is working, although somehow I doubt it.

Comment Kind of explains "by reflex" (Score 1) 160

by iONiUM (#47539797) Attached to: Soccer Superstar Plays With Very Low Brain Activity

I think this study kind of explains when you learn something so well (say, by doing it so many times), you can do it "by reflex." Perhaps what that really means is you no longer need cognitive ability to do those tasks, such as riding a bike, driving in clear conditions, or typing.

I think what they've found is that the brain becomes more reliant on on older parts of the brain that operates in the sub-conscious, perhaps like the brain stem. So doing something over and over might move the ability from the cortex down into lower parts, not unlike programming something in Java, vs assembly. Both languages can accomplish the same thing, but they way they do it is very different, as they are at different layers of abstraction.

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