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Comment Re:Define "Winning" (Score 4, Insightful) 1211

by Visaris (#25568039) Attached to: Discuss the US Presidential Election & the War

I see news of marches by the Iraqi people frequently in the US news

I see news of marches by anti-abortion activists frequently. Clearly that means all Americans are anti-abortion.

Right?

That's interesting... I've never once seen any marches by the Iraqis where they are shouting chants about how much they love us and want us to stay. I must have missed that in the US media, which would have no reason to want to play that sort of thing... I'm sorry, I just don't buy it that the majority of the Iraqi people support our occupation of their sovereign country.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Second Amendment Stance as an Indicator

Journal by Visaris
"How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual... as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of." ~Texas State Rep. Suzanna Gratia-Hupp
Privacy

Senator Proposes to Monitor All P2P Traffic for Illegal Files 626

Posted by Zonk from the kind-of-strains-the-mind-to-think-about-huh dept.
mytrip writes "Senator Joe Biden (D-Del) has proposed an ambitious plan, costing on the order of $1 billion, aimed at curtailing illegal activities via P2P networks. His plan involves utilizing new software to monitor peer-to-peer traffic on an ongoing basis. 'At an afternoon Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing about child exploitation on the Internet, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said he was under the impression it's "pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation" simply by looking at file names. He urged use of those techniques by investigators to help nab the most egregious offenders."
User Journal

Journal Journal: State Control

Journal by Visaris
B'Trey (111263) on Thursday April 10, @12:21PM (#23025904):
Horsefeathers. You (that is, society) assumed that burden on its own. It doesn't place any obligations on me. It's as if I decided to come over and mow your lawn for you. You'd probably be delighted that you didn't have to do it yourself anymore. But if, six months later, I came banging on your door and demanded that you stop allowing your kids to play in your own back yard because they were leaving toys laying around that made it
Intel

Intel Skulltrail Benchmark and Analysis 111

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the coming-up-short dept.
Tom's Hardware has a detailed benchmark and analysis of Intel's new Skulltrail offering, taking a look at 8 vs 4 cores. The comparison uses games, A/V applications, office applications, and 3D rendering tools to help demonstrate benchmarks. "We were disappointed by the Skulltrail platform. Although we have tested and reviewed numerous Intel products, we have never had such a half-baked system such as this in our labs. If this sounds harsh, bear in mind that all we have to base this conclusion on is the Skulltrail system itself in its current state, which Intel provided as an official review platform. We do not know whether Intel plans to revise and improve the platform before the final versions ship to retail."
User Journal

Journal Journal: What my Journal is:

Journal by Visaris
I think a few people reading my journal have missed the very first journal entry I have made. This is entirely reasonable, as I don't expect everyone to read the entire journal.
The Courts

Judge Strikes Down Part of Patriot Act 673

Posted by samzenpus from the but-what-about-the-terrorists dept.
Shining Celebi writes "U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero ruled in favor of the ACLU and struck down a portion of the revised USA PATRIOT Act this morning, forcing investigators to go through the courts to obtain approval before ordering ISPs to give up information on customers, instead of just sending them a National Security Letter. In the words of Judge Marrero, this use of National Security Letters 'offends the fundamental constitutional principles of checks and balances and separation of powers.'"
Be

Will Pervasive Multithreading Make a Comeback? 657

Posted by kdawson from the let-it-be dept.
exigentsky writes "Having looked at BeOS technology, it is clear that, like NeXTSTEP, it was ahead of its time. Most remarkable to me is the incredible responsiveness of the whole OS. On relatively slow hardware, BeOS could run eight movies simultaneously while still being responsive in all of its GUI controls, and launching programs almost instantaneously. Today, more than ten years after BeOS's introduction, its legendary responsiveness is still unmatched. There is simply no other major OS that has pervasive multithreading from the lowest level up (requiring no programmer tricks). Is it likely, or at least possible, that future versions of Windows or OS X could become pervasively multithreaded without creating an entirely new OS?"
Privacy

Latest Revelations on the FBI's Data Mining of America 446

Posted by samzenpus from the just-forward-your-mail-to-homeland-security dept.
An anonymous reader writes "You probably already knew that the FBI was data mining Americans in the "search" for potential terrorists, but did you know that they're also supposed to be looking for people in the U.S. engaged in criminal activity that is not really supposed to be the province of the federal government? Now the feds are alleged to be data mining for insurance fraudsters, identity thieves, and questionable online pharmacists. That's what they're telling us now. What else could they be looking for that they are not telling us about?"
Announcements

Submission + - Superconducting heat spreader to obsolete CPU fans

Submitted by vinsci
vinsci writes: R&D company Novel Concepts, Inc. has announced its new IsoSkin heat spreader material that dissipates heat 20 times more effectively than copper, according to the company. The thin (down to 500 microns) IsoSkin spreaders could eventually be used to replace the outer "skin" of portable electronics, thereby eliminating the need for heat sinks and fans that cool notebooks and PCs, ExtremeTech reports.
Windows

Vista Family Discount Keys Found Not Compatible 394

Posted by CowboyNeal from the fits-a-different-lock dept.
acousticiris writes "Many (if not all) users who took advantage of Microsoft's Vista Family Discount have been issued invalid installation keys and cannot install Windows Vista Home Premium. Microsoft says, 'There is no expected time period for a fix at this time.' According to the article, the keys are valid for something, just not Windows Vista. Perhaps it's just too simple to issue these folks new keys and send them on their way."
AMD

AMD Says Barcelona Will Outperform Clovertown 153

Posted by kdawson from the horse-race dept.
Dysfnctnl85 points out a ZDNet Blog posting in which AMD claims that its upcoming quad-core "Barcelona" chipset should be 40% faster than "Clovertown," Intel's quad-core Xeon 5300 line. AMD says that the introduction of Barcelona marks a shift in their strategy from emphasizing price to performance. The post goes on: "Intel is eager to claw back some of the server market share from AMD, and this is where Clovertown comes in... The Xeon 5300 line will represent excellent value for money since Intel plans on pricing them the same as its dual core Xeon 5100 processors. That could make things tough for AMD."
Google

Google's Sinister(?) Plans 287

Posted by Zonk from the do-no-meh dept.
puppetman writes "This week, Robert X. Cringely makes some interesting observations as to what Google's up to next. He theorizes that Google is looking to create a bandwidth shortage that will drive ISP/cable/telephone customers into it's open arms (often with the blessing of the ISP/cable/telephone company). The evidence: leasing massive amounts of network capacity, and huge data centers in rural areas (close to power-generation facilities). The shortage will only occur if the average bandwidth consumption by individual consumers skyrockets; think mainstream BitTorrent, streaming moves from NetFlix, tv episodes from iTunes, video games on demand, etc, etc. Spooky and sinister, or sublime and smart?"
User Journal

Journal Journal: "Think of the Internet as a highway."

Journal by Visaris
"Think of the Internet as a highway."

There it is again. Some clueless fool talking about the "Information Superhighway." They don't know didley about the net. It's nothing like a superhighway. That's a rotten metaphor.

Suppose the metaphor ran in the other direction. Suppose the highways were like the net. . .
Movies

Netflix Now Offers Instant Online Movie Streaming 247

Posted by Zonk from the goodbye-video-store-you-won't-be-missed dept.
An anonymous reader writes "If you're the owner of a video rental store, it may be time to start thinking about getting into a different business, according to ZDNet. Netflix, the online movie rental service, is offering a new feature that allows its subscribers to instantly view movies and TV shows on their PC. From the article: 'Following a one-time, under-60-second installation of a simple browser applet, most subscribers' movie selections will begin playing in their Web browser in as little as 10 to 15 seconds. Movies can be paused and a position bar gives viewers the ability to immediately jump to any point in the movie. In all, the instant watching feature requires only Internet connectivity with a minimum of one megabit per second of bandwidth.' These movies are in addition to the standard DVDs you can have at home, it should be pointed out. You can see a demonstration of the service at the Hacking Netflix blog." Only a small percentage of customers have it available at the moment, but they hope to roll it out to everyone within six months.

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