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Comment Re:Snapstream? (Score 1) 536

by dugrrr (#30308770) Attached to: Best PC DVR Software, For Any Platform?
I have to chime in since I was a happy BeyondTV customer. Snapstream's interface was better than Tivo's (an WAY better than Cox Cable's POS). But that's been some time now opting simply for Zoomplayer or VLC ...I don't even have cable anymore...I no longer surf, I just wade in.

Comment Ritualized Terrorism (Score 1) 709

by dugrrr (#29918793) Attached to: This Hallowe'en ...
Every autumn we indoctrinate our children in a ritual of disguising themselves before knocking on strangers' doors and extorting confections from them on threat of vandalism. Gotta love tradition!

Comment Ecliptics? (Score 1) 251

by dugrrr (#29780667) Attached to: Giant Ribbon Discovered At Edge of Solar System
While the ribbon's perpendicular orientation to the galactic magnetic field is interesting, I'd like to know the relative orientations of the galactic and solar system ecliptics. If for no other reason than to have a frame of reference. I'm guessing that the galactic field is roughly perpendicular to its ecliptic (right hand rule?) but not necessarily to our direction of penetration with our heliopause.
Upgrades

Submission + - Ubuntu with Ext3 is Faster than Windows 7 and XP (flexense.com)

Submitted by
twitter
twitter writes: "Slashdot has reported questions about the performance of Windows 7 and comparisons to Ubuntu in general tests. At the time, people claimed that XP was faster than both and that Windows 7 just needed some work. Another study now shows that Ubuntu wipes both XP and Windows 7 in a key area, file service.

Abundant performance delivered by today's quad-core processors has shifted the performance bottleneck from the CPU and memory to the disk I/O subsystem in most of day-to-day usage scenarios. ... which one of modern operating systems is capable of utilizing fast hard drives and multi-core CPUs most effectively?

In all file search, classification and storage utilization analysis operations Ubuntu is faster than both tested Windows operating systems by a huge margin. ... users and IT professionals constantly working with large amounts data should seriously consider using Ubuntu Linux as the main file and data management platform.

I doubt any of this change by the promissed October 22 release date and don't know why people still use XP."
Networking

Submission + - ISS pilots 'interplanetary internet' (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by schliz
schliz writes: Researchers developing the 'Interplanetary Internet' have launched its first permanent node in Space via a payload aboard the International Space Station. The network is based on a new communications protocol called Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN). It will be tested heavily this month, and could give astronauts direct Internet access within a year.

The Interplanetary Internet is the brainchild of Vint Cerf ('father of the Internet'), among others. Last year, NASA tested the technology on the Deep Impact spacecraft.
Government

Submission + - Cheney hid secret CIA plan from congress

Submitted by tvlinux
tvlinux writes: Leon Panetta, head of the CIA, has accused former US Vice-President Dick Cheney of concealing an intelligence program from Congress, Senator Dianne Feinstein stated. The program was hidden from congress for 8 years and was discovered June 22 2009.
Privacy

Submission + - How Google is Trying to Undermine Internet Privacy

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Great article recently published by the University of San Francisco Intellectual Property Law Journal (Author: Tim Wafa, J.D. Loyola Law School & BSCE Santa Clara University) on how Google's push for the APEC Privacy Framework is an attempt to undermine Internet Privacy Rights.
The article can be found at http://works.bepress.com/tim_wafa/1/

SOME INTERESTING HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE ARTICLE:
"APEC would give private corporations carte blanche to exploit private user data through an overly flexible self-regulated interpretive system and would provide no mechanism for oversight."

"In the winter of 2006, a wireless hacker pled guilty when his Google searches were used as evidence against him. The defendant ran a Google search over the network using the following search terms: "how to broadcast interference over wifi 2.4 GHZ," "interference over wifi 2.4 Ghz," "wireless networks 2.4 interference," and "make device interfere wireless network." While court papers did not describe how the FBI obtained his searches (e.g. through a seized hard-drive or directly from the search-engine), Google has indicated that it has the ability to provide search terms to law enforcement if given an Internet address or Web cookie. In 2005, prosecutors in a North Carolina murder case introduced as evidence search phrases pulled from a seized hard drive. The defendant was found guilty in part because he searched for the words "neck," "snap," "break," and "hold" before his wife was killed. Whether Internet users are aware of the broad implications that privacy infringement (in both the legal and normative sense) has and will continue to have on their daily lives is hard to gauge."
Robotics

Submission + - Robotic glider soars like the birds (homelinux.com)

Submitted by
SoaringIsAwesome
SoaringIsAwesome writes: "Dan Edwards, a student at NC State University, is attempting to break two records by creating an autonomous glider. The project goal is a 142 mile cross country flight and a 25 mile flight with return without human intervention. The glider finds thermal updrafts and automatically circles them to gain altitude, much like birds and insects do. Recently, the glider flew in the desert for 4.5 hours and 70.5 miles by itself using only air currents to stay aloft. Since the NC State demonstration vehicle does not have a motor, this shows real promise for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that actually have a motor, with possibilities of extending flight duration considerably. Combine daytime soaring with a solar system to charge batteries for the night, such as the 84 hour flight by QinetiQ's Zephyr, and you might just get an answer to flying for months on end. With this kind of endurance, the eye in the sky that the city of Lancaster is considering might be even more practical."

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