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Comment Re:Looks like the mismatch nailed me (Score 1, Insightful) 163

by StormReaver (#48532111) Attached to: New Virus Means Deadlier Flu Season Is Possible

Basically, I was wearing a bulletproof vest, but got shot in the leg.

You were wearing the a bulletproof vest produced by the same designer who made the Emperor's new clothes.

The Flu vaccine is no more effective than random chance, but it's a huge money maker for the pharmaceutical industry.
Australia

Australian Target Stores Ban GTA V For Depictions of Violence Against Women 310

Posted by samzenpus from the not-in-my-country dept.
MojoKid writes "There's no such thing as an official Grand Theft Auto game until there's been a bit of controversy leading to its removal from at least one set of store shelves. It's a right of passage for the GTA series, if you will, and GTA V just earned its place among the franchise's previous titles by ruffling feathers in Australia, leading to its ousting from Target stores. At issue this time around is the "game's depictions of violence against women." Jim Cooper, general manager of corporate affairs for Target, explained that customers have voiced a "significant level of concern about the game's content." Separate reports say Target Australia received a petition with nearly 40,000 signatures demanding the game be removed. According to the petition, the game gives players plenty of "incentive is to commit sexual violence against women, then abuse or kill them to proceed or get 'health' points."
Technology

The Fastest Camera Ever Made Captures 100 Billion Frames Per Second 122

Posted by samzenpus from the don't-forget-the-flash dept.
Jason Koebler writes A new imaging technique is able to capture images at 100 billion frames per second—fast enough to watch light interact with objects, which could eventually lead to new cloaking technologies. The camera was developed by a team at Washington University in St. Louis—for the team's first tests, it was able to visualize laser pulse reflections, photons racing through air and through resin, and "faster-than-light propagation of non-information." It can also be used in conjunction with telescopes and to image optical and quantum communications, according to lead researcher Liang Gao.

Comment Re:What if... (Score 1) 574

by StormReaver (#48507365) Attached to: Hawking Warns Strong AI Could Threaten Humanity

[What if] Stephen Hawking is not who he claims to be through the electronic speaker box?

Sadly, given the stupidity of the Human race (and Kentucky in particular), I believe you have just started a new conspiracy.

But maybe not. Given the same stupidity of the Human race, it's likely that no one lacking enough brain cells to believe such a thing would know who Stephan Hawking is; given that he isn't moving a ball from one part of a grassy field to another.

Comment Complete Waste of Time (Score 1) 523

by StormReaver (#48490387) Attached to: Finland Dumps Handwriting In Favor of Typing

Cursive is a complete waste of time. At best, it is barely marginally faster than printing/block writing. Most of the time, cursive writing is significantly slower than printing (especially for those brain-dead connections containing o, a, c, g, h, j, k, u, v, and w) and much less legible.

In practice, the only time I ever write in cursive is when signing my name. In all other cases, it's faster and more legible to write in print. I was brainwashed with the necessity of cursive when I was a kid in the seventies and eighties. But it always seemed so bizarre to focus so heavily on something so less efficient than printing.
Education

Finland Dumps Handwriting In Favor of Typing 523

Posted by timothy from the take-a-letter-maria dept.
mikejuk writes It seems incredible that in the 21st century schools are still teaching children to scratch marks on paper. Well in Finland they are taking a step in the direction of the future by giving up teaching handwriting. The Savon Sanomat newspaper reports that from autumn 2016 cursive handwriting will no longer be a compulsory part of the school curriculum. Instead the schools will teach keyboard skills and 'texting'. The idea of teaching proper keyboard skills to children is unquestionably a great idea, the idea of texting is a little more dubious and many will mourn the loss of a traditional skill like cursive writing. So what about a world where cursive writing is forgotten? What do you do when your computer is dead and you need to leave a note? The death of cursive script probably isn't the death of handwriting but the death of doing it quickly and with style. Some no doubt will want to master it just for the sake of it — like driving a stick shift. I know some U.S. schools have done the same; how proficient should kids be with cursive?
Google

Google Should Be Broken Up, Say European MPs 237

Posted by samzenpus from the breaking-things-up dept.
An anonymous reader is one of many to send word that the European Parliament has voted 384 to 174 in favor of unbundling search engines from other commercial services in order to ensure competition. "The European Parliament has voted in favor of breaking Google up, as a solution to complaints that it favors is own services in search results. Politicians have no power to enforce a break-up, but the landmark vote sends a clear message to European regulators to get tough on the net giant. US politicians and trade bodies have voiced their dismay at the vote. The ultimate decision will rest with EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager. She has inherited the anti-competitive case lodged by Google's rivals in 2010. Google has around 90% market share for search in Europe. The Commission has never before ordered the break-up of any company, and many believe it is unlikely to do so now. But politicians are desperate to find a solution to the long-running anti-competitive dispute with Google."
United States

DHS Set To Destroy "Einstein" Surveillance Records 71

Posted by samzenpus from the nothing-to-see-here dept.
schwit1 sends word that The Department of Homeland Security plans on disposing of all the records from a 3-year-long surveillance program without letting the public have access to them. The Department of Homeland Security is poised to ditch all records from a controversial network monitoring system called "Einstein" that are at least three years old, but not for security reasons. DHS reasons the files — which include data about traffic to government websites, agency network intrusions and general vulnerabilities — have no research significance. But some security experts say, to the contrary, DHS would be deleting a treasure chest of historical threat data. And privacy experts, who wish the metadata wasn't collected at all, say destroying it could eliminate evidence that the government wide surveillance system does not perform as intended. The National Archives and Records Administration has tentatively approved the disposal plan, pending a public comment period.
EU

The EU Has a Plan To Break Up Google 334

Posted by Soulskill from the better-get-on-that-don't-be-evil-stuff-quick dept.
An anonymous reader points out a report at the Financial Times (paywalled) which says the European Parliament is preparing to call for the break-up of Google. According to the draft seen by the FT, a potential solution to ongoing anti-trust concerns with Google is "unbundling search engines from other services." The article notes, "The European parliament has no formal power to split up companies, but has increasing influence on the commission, which initiates all EU legislation. The commission has been investigating concerns over Google’s dominance of online search for five years, with critics arguing that the company’s rankings favour its own services, hitting its rivals’ profits. Unbundling cannot be excluded, said Andreas Schwab, a German MEP who is one of the motion’s backers."
Yahoo!

Firefox Signs Five-Year Deal With Yahoo, Drops Google as Default Search Engine 400

Posted by samzenpus from the new-couple dept.
mpicpp writes with news that Yahoo will soon become the default search engine in Firefox. Google's 10-year run as Firefox's default search engine is over. Yahoo wants more search traffic, and a deal with Mozilla will bring it. In a major departure for both Mozilla and Yahoo, Firefox's default search engine is switching from Google to Yahoo in the United States. "I'm thrilled to announce that we've entered into a five-year partnership with Mozilla to make Yahoo the default search experience on Firefox across mobile and desktop," Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer said in a blog post Wednesday. "This is the most significant partnership for Yahoo in five years." The change will come to Firefox users in the US in December, and later Yahoo will bring that new "clean, modern and immersive search experience" to all Yahoo search users. In another part of the deal, Yahoo will support the Do Not Track technology for Firefox users, meaning that it will respect users' preferences not to be tracked for advertising purposes. With millions of users who perform about 100 billion searches a year, Firefox is a major source of the search traffic that's Google's bread and butter. Some of those searches produce search ads, and Mozilla has been funded primarily from a portion of that revenue that Google shares. In 2012, the most recent year for which figures are available, that search revenue brought in the lion's share of Mozilla's $311 million in revenue.

Comment Re:Go back in time 5 years (Score 2) 581

by StormReaver (#48418271) Attached to: Debian Votes Against Mandating Non-systemd Compatibility

Go back 5 years and imagine yourself trying to explain systemd to all the Linux developers.

That depends on how you do it. If you were to use the massive disinformation campaign you're perpetuating, and those who know better didn't speak up, then systemd would die on the vine. However, if you accurately describe what systemd does, then Linux would be five years ahead of where it is now.

Having actually read what systemd does, I'm looking forward to seeing it on my machines. It seems to solve several important problems, and seems to be well architected.

So far, every argument against systemd I've read has been a strawman (invent a problem that systemd doesn't actually have, then argue against it). The anti-systemd campaign has been truly bizarre, but that's how ignorance is typically presented.
Cloud

Microsoft Azure Outage Across the Globe 167

Posted by Soulskill from the maybe-you-should-call-it-office364 dept.
hawkinspeter writes: The BBC reports that overnight an outage of Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform took down many third-party sites that rely on it, in addition to disrupting Microsoft's own products. Office 365 and Xbox Live services were affected.

This happened at a particularly inopportune time, as Microsoft has recently been pushing its Azure services in an effort to catch up with other providers such as Amazon, IBM, and Google. Just a couple of hours previously, Microsoft had screened an Azure advert in the UK during the Scotland v. England soccer match." (Most services are back online. As of this writing, Application Insights is still struggling, and Europe is having problems with hosted VMs.)

Comment Re:Waste (Score 1) 276

Spending six years learning how to program before going to college did me know good. It's like knowing the fundamentals really was a waste of time and was so not transferrable.....

Then you didn't learn the fundamentals. Instead, you learned something very specific to a particluar product. They're not even remotely the same thing, as the fundamentals haven't changed in over 30 years.
Government

Sweden Considers Adding "Sexism" Ratings To Video Games 642

Posted by samzenpus from the including-everyone dept.
An anonymous reader writes A government-funded agency in Sweden is considering creating special labels for video games based on whether or not the games' portrayals of women are sexist. From the article: "Avoiding sexism and gender stereotypes in video games produced in Sweden will become a key goal for the association, which has been given a 272,000 kronor ($36,672) grant by Sweden's government-funded innovation agency, Vinnova. Inspired by the Bechdel test, which looks at whether fictional films or books feature at least two women talking about a topic other than men, Dataspelsbranchen will work with several game developers to analyze how Swedish video games portray female characters and gender issues.

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