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Social Networks

Meg Whitman Campaign Shows How Not To Use Twitter 147

tsamsoniw writes "California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's campaign team attempted to share with her Twitter followers an endorsement from a police association. Unfortunately, the campaign press secretary entered an incorrect or incomplete Bit.ly URL in the Tweet, which took clickers to a YouTube video featuring a bespectacled, long-haired Japanese man in a tutu and leggings rocking out on a bass guitar. And for whatever reason, the Tweet, which went out on the 18th, has remained active through today."
Crime

Girls Bugged Teachers' Staff Room 227

A pair of enterprising Swedish schoolgirls ended up in court after they were caught bugging their teachers break room. The duo hoped they would hear discussions about upcoming tests and school work, allowing them to get better grades. It worked until one of them decided to brag about it on Facebook, and the authorities were called in. The girls were charged with trespassing and fined 2,000 kronor ($270) each in Stockholm District Court.

Comment The system is broken (Score 4, Insightful) 135

There are so many trusted certificate signing authorities that I believe the trust system is untrustworthy. I counted over 40 certificate authorities in Mozilla and I did not make it past the letter "I' in the list of trusted CA's. Throw in the intermediate CA's and the problem gets worse. Lets assume that all CA's are trustworthy. Furthermore, assume that there is a 1 in a million chance for any individual CA in any given year to make a mistake. A system of 100 CA's would have a 1 in 10,000 chance of making a mistake. Many of the CA are regionally focused and it makes no sense why a user should trust all CA's equally.

The following changes could be useful:

  • selectively prune the trust hierarchy
  • flag certificates that change (there are addons)
  • specify the maximum path length you are willing to trust
  • Be able to assign a trust weight to a CA

Comment Re:Huh? (Score 2, Interesting) 139

However, if you are putting together a forensic program you need to be able to assess bombs made with Pu or U or both. Even if you could identify the reactor or mine that the fissile material came from, that does not tell you who built the weapon. There are many factors that a forensic capability has to account for.

Nuclear Weapons Incident Response

The Nuclear Weapons Incident Response (NWIR) Program serves as the United States’ primary capability for responding to and mitigating nuclear and radiological incidents worldwide. The FY 2009 Request for these activities is $221.9 million, of which $31.7 million is dedicated to the continued implementation of two national security initiatives that will strengthen the Nation’s emergency response capabilities—the National Technical Nuclear Forensics (NTNF) and the Stabilization Implementation programs.

In FY2009 alone there was a sizable chunk of money spent. You should implement you concept and sell it to the USG. Otherwise, please do not insult the people who are working on this program.

Comment Re:Huh? (Score 4, Interesting) 139

And please explain how alpha mass spec analysis of spent fuel from a reactor would help with a U235 based weapon. Also, please explain how you would back out the fractionation of the debris. For extra credit, you can explain how activation products can facilitate your analysis.

Also, Sandia is not the design lab you are looking for. You are confusing them with Los Alamos and Livermore.

I respect the fact that you have a four digit UID, but the problem is not as trivial as you make it out to be.

Comment Terrible idea (Score 4, Insightful) 273

I think the concept behind the .xxx domain has the potential of leading the internet down a dangerous path. If the other TLD's are forced by their governing entity, e.g. the US government for the .com TLD, to prohibit pornographic content, the precedent will be set to segregate and regulate content.
Linux Business

Hemisphere Games Reveals Osmos Linux Sales Numbers 131

An anonymous reader writes "Hemisphere Games analyzes the sales numbers for their Linux port of Osmos and ask themselves, 'Is it worth porting games to Linux?' The short, simple answer is 'yes.' Breakdown and details in the post." A few other interesting details: the port took them about two man-months of work, the day they released for Linux was their single best sales day ever, and they got a surprising amount of interest from Russia and Eastern Europe. Their data only reflects sales through their website, and they make the point that "the lack of a strong Linux portal makes it a much less 'competitive' OS for commercial development." Hopefully someday the rumored Steam Linux client will help to solve that.

Comment Quixotic Attempt I'm Afraid (Score 4, Interesting) 162

I'm glad India is taking a stand that supports its national interests and that position coincides with my belief that intellectual property rights have gone to far. The big "however" is that India does not have a great success rate of stopping a treaty. They did not sign the NPT nor the CTBT and the NPT is in force and the CTBT would be if it was not for the Annex II requirement.

The only thing that will kill the ACTA treaty is if a significant number of countries refuse to sign it or reject it during ratification. Unfortunately, I fear that any US administration would gladly sign the treaty and the US Senate would readily ratify it. If only the treaty would harm the gay unborn whales...

Science

Why the First Cowboy To Draw Always Gets Shot 398

cremeglace writes "Have you ever noticed that the first cowboy to draw his gun in a Hollywood Western is invariably the one to get shot? Nobel-winning physicist Niels Bohr did, once arranging mock duels to test the validity of this cinematic curiosity. Researchers have now confirmed that people indeed move faster if they are reacting, rather than acting first."
Games

The Murky Origins of Zork's Name 70

mjn writes "Computational media researcher Nick Montfort traces the murky origins of Zork's name. It's well known that the word was used in MIT hacker jargon around that time, but how did it get there? Candidates are the term 'zorch' from late 1950s DIY electronics slang, the use of the term as a placeholder in some early 1970s textbooks, the typo a QWERTY user would get if he typed 'work' on an AZERTY keyboard, and several uses in obscure sci-fi. No solid answers so far, though, as there are problems with many of the possible explanations that would have made MIT hackers unlikely to have run across them at the right time."

Comment Re:Not government's job (Score 1) 681

In your case driving works out better than mass transit. That does not mean mass transit is useless. If the state is able to avoid building new roads by utilizing trains, they are saving taxpayers money. Take 495 as an example. The only way the capacity of that road can be increased is to expand into private property or build an elevated road way.

For my commute in the DC area, the train is vastly superior to driving in terms of speed. In fact, almost everybody I work with uses public transportation and the usage is pretty independent of salary. The only way I can drive faster than the train is if I go into work before 5:45 AM or after 9:30. Even if driving was comparable or faster than the train, the cost of parking is not cheap.

In my previous job in the DC area, my 23 mile commute took about an hour (there was no practical public transportation). Fortunately, parking was free.

Education

US Colleges Say Hiring US Students a Bad Deal 490

theodp writes "Many US colleges and universities have notices posted on their websites informing US companies that they're tax chumps if they hire students who are US citizens. 'In fact, a company may save money by hiring international students because the majority of them are exempt from Social Security (FICA) and Medicare tax requirements,' advises the taxpayer-supported University of Pittsburgh (pdf) as it makes the case against hiring its own US students. You'll find identical pitches made by the University of Delaware, the University of Cincinnati, Kansas State University, the University of Southern California, the University of Wisconsin, Iowa State University, and other public colleges and universities. The same message is also echoed by private schools, such as John Hopkins University, Brown University, Rollins College and Loyola University Chicago."

Comment Re:what about .sex and .xxx??? (Score 2, Interesting) 607

I would offer the following argument. I think the creation of a .sex or a .xxx namespace will promote censorship rather than free speech. Once you create such a namespace, there will be strong pressure to migrate such content from the .com, .net, etc namespaces to the new naughty namespaces. It is the internet equivalent of a "free speech area." Once you create a .xxx/.sex namespace, why not create a .political, .nepal or .wariniraq etc TLDs?

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