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Comment Re:easily defeated, only if you disable the vector (Score 3, Insightful) 116

by Lord_Frederick (#33478408) Attached to: DoD Takes Criticism From Security Experts On Cyberwar Incident

DoD is very big, and there are hundreds of thousands of DoD computers that don't follow the simplest security best practices. Just because the NSA publishes a document on how a Windows box should be configured, doesn't mean it gets configured that way in the field. Military IT is just like social issues; The only area not being neglected and starved of resources is the last area to have a major shitstorm.

Comment Another short-lived gimmick (Score 1) 594

by Lord_Frederick (#33478344) Attached to: The Joke Known As 3D TV

This latest crop of 2D-to-3D technology is best used in 5-minute amusement park rides, where all the other 3D tech belongs. At best, it provides a few cool moments during the action scenes. At worst, you have a headache after too many blurry shapes try to trick your brain into seeing depth that isn't there and have to stop watching.

Submission + - Patent case ruling against Microsoft overturned (theage.com.au)

Submitted by
some_guy_88
some_guy_88 writes: "The $338 million verdict against Microsoft disucssed here previously for violating a patent held by Uniloc has been overturned. Ric Richardson, who divides his time between NSW, Australia and California, is the founder of Uniloc, which sued Microsoft in 2003 for violating its patent relating to technology designed to deter software piracy."
Sci-Fi

Submission + - The Twilight Zone Turns Fifty

Submitted by
pickens
pickens writes: "On a Friday night on October 2, 1959, Americans began moving "into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into... the Twilight Zone." Like the time-space warps that anchored so many of the show's plots, Rod Serling's veiled commentary remains as soul-baring today as it did a half-century ago, and the show's popularity endures in multiple facets of American pop culture appearing nearly uninterrupted through television, syndication and DVD releases and under license to air in 30 countries. "The whole idea of 'The Twilight Zone' jumped off the television screen and became a catchphrase, a buzzword for something much beyond the TV show itself," says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. "When you say Twilight Zone, it's its own genre." The original show ran just five seasons, 1959 to 1964 with 156 episodes filmed for the original series; Serling wrote 92 of them and other contributors included Richard Matheson and Ray Bradbury. Anniversary observances are planned at Ithaca College in New York, where Serling taught from 1967 until his death in 1975, and which keeps Serling's archives; and at Antioch College in Ohio, where Serling was a student, met his wife, Carol and later taught. "I don't think he would have thought in a million years that Twilight Zone would be having an important 50th birthday or that it would still be on," says Carol Serling, widow of the show's creator. "Through parable and suggestion, he could make points that he couldn't make on straight television because there were too many sacred cows and sponsors and people who said you couldn't do that.""
Privacy

Submission + - Police Can't Place GPS on Autos without Warrant

Submitted by
pickens
pickens writes: "EFF reports that the Supreme Court of Massachusetts has held in Commonwealth v. Connolly that police may not place GPS tracking devices on cars without first getting a warrant reasoning that the installation of the GPS device was a seizure of the suspect's vehicle. Search and seizure is a legal procedure used in many civil law and common law legal systems whereby police or other authorities and their agents, who suspect that a crime has been committed, do a search of a person's property and confiscate any relevant evidence to the crime. According to the decision "when an electronic surveillance device is installed in a motor vehicle, be it a beeper, radio transmitter, or GPS device, the government's control and use of the defendant's vehicle to track its movements interferes with the defendant's interest in the vehicle notwithstanding that he maintains possession of it." Although the case only protects drivers in Massachusetts, another recent state court case, People v. Weaver in the State of New York, also held that because modern GPS devices are far more powerful than beepers, police must get a warrant to use the trackers, even on cars and people traveling the public roads. "Massachusetts and New York are in the forefront of protecting their citizens' right to location privacy against technological encroachment," writes Jennifer Granick, Civil Liberties Director at the EFF. "Federal courts should do the same under the Fourth Amendment. For the Constitution to have continued relevance in a technological world, it should protect the privacy that individuals reasonably anticipate as we move through the world, and that means no pervasive, remote, suspicionless, wholesale tracking by GPS or other device.""
Movies

Submission + - Mickey Mouse Buys Spider-Man (usatoday.com)

Submitted by Anonymusing
Anonymusing writes: Disney is buying Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion. Marvel shares jumped at the news, while Disney shares dropped. Said Disney CEO Robert Iger, this will combine Marvel's "strong global brand and world-renowned library of characters" with Disney's "unparalleled global portfolio of entertainment properties". Iron Man was too busy beating up Goofy to comment.
Media

Submission + - Disney Buys Marvel

Submitted by whisper_jeff
whisper_jeff writes: Disney has announced they will be purchasing Marvel.

"Building on its strategy of delivering quality branded content to people around the world, The Walt Disney Company /quotes/comstock/13*!dis/quotes/nls/dis (DIS 26.52, -0.32, -1.19%) has agreed to acquire Marvel Entertainment, Inc. in a stock and cash transaction, the companies announced today."
Operating Systems

Submission + - OS deathmatch: Snow Leopard vs. Windows 7 (computerworld.com)

Submitted by BeckySharp
BeckySharp writes: With the nearly simultaneous release of Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" (available right now) and Microsoft's Windows 7 (available Oct. 22), you get the inevitable debate: Which is the better operating system, Windows 7 or Snow Leopard? To help determine that, Computerworld's Preston Gralla put both operating systems through their paces, selected categories for a head-to-head competition, and then chose a winner in each category.
Space

Submission + - India eyeing for Mars by 2013-2015 (indiatimes.com)

Submitted by
freakxx
freakxx writes: "After the (partial?!) success of Chandrayaan-1, and the Chandrayaan-2 mission by 2012, ISRO chief G Madhavan Nair announced today that India is looking forward to take its next space mission to Mars, somewhere between 2013-2015. He said that the mission is now at a conceptual stage and will be taken up after the Chandrayaan-2. If the Mars becomes a success, this will be a giant step for the India to step into the outer space as well as to establish itself as one of the very few space-superpowers. It will further enable the country to attract a bigger chunk of the billions of $$$ of international satellite launch market. Ultimately, this may turn out to be beneficial for the whole country in a long term, both in terms of prestige and technology."
Businesses

Submission + - Convincing your company to go Open Source 1

Submitted by
Cycon
Cycon writes: "No doubt asked previously, but what are today's most compelling arguments (pro or con) for a small company to release its software under an Open Source license, in particular the GPL? Current and future fund raising may be jeopardized or at least complicated. There may be fears competitors will more easily absorb your unique features, or a larger entity will leverage your work and push you aside. On the positive side is ethical merit — which beyond as its own end may offer community benefits such as code contributions, constructive testing and feedback, and perhaps some good press. Lawyers may be required for the finer points, but what should any realistic business consider?"
Math

Submission + - Top 10 list of geeky math comics/webcomics 1

Submitted by
Mike
Mike writes: "I'm a math geek, so I enjoy reading the occasional comic strip that's math related. Here is my list of the top 10 webcomics/comics that I read on a regular basis:
1. Foxtrot — Surely, everyone knows this one. It occasionally has a lot of math humor but is currently on a Sunday only publication schedule.
2. xkcd — Updated every Mon, Wed, Fri, and a very popular webcomic online.
3. Abstruse Goose — Funny webcomic updated regularly, but often physics related as well.
4. Spiked Math — New daily webcomic in color.
5. (x, why?) — A funny webcomic, and has over 350 comics published to date. The most recent ones are kind of meh.
6. Brown Sharpie — Updated every Mon, Wed, Fri, and can be quite humorous.
7. Brightly Wound — Often contains physics and astronomy as well.
8. twisted pencil — Usually updated Tue/Thu and contains lots of puppets.
9. mathTICS — Usually has some pretty funny strips. Not sure if the author is as active right now and the archive only has the first 100 strips.
10. Indexed — Interesting concept. Mostly consists of venn diagrams and graphs."
Idle

Submission + - Dad Builds 700 pound Cannon for Son's Birthday 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Charleston Daily Mail reports that machinist Mike Daugherty built his son a working cannon for his birthday — not a model — a real working cannon. "It looks like something right out of the battle at Gettysburg," says Daugherty. The 700 pound cast iron and steel howitzer, designed to use comparatively small explosive charges to propel projectiles at relatively high trajectories with a steep angle of descent, has a 4-inch gun barrel that is 36 inches long mounted on a wooden gun carriage with two 36- inch diameter wheels and took Daugherty about two weeks to build at a cost of about $6,000. "I've always been interested in the Civil War and cannons, so I thought it would be a good gift," says Daugherty's 11-year old son Logan. Daugherty said he is not worried about the federal government coming to get his son's cannon because he spoke to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and found it is legal to own such a cannon because it does not use a firing pin and is muzzle loaded so the government does not consider the weapon a threat. Two days after the family celebrated Logan's 11th birthday, father and son offered a field demonstration of the new cannon on top of a grassy hill overlooking Fairmont, West Virginia and on the third try, the blank inside the barrel went boom and a canon was born. For a followup they popped a golf ball into the gun barrel, lit the fuse, and watched the golf ball split the sky and land about 600 yards away. "Any rebels charging up this hill would be in trouble with a cannon like this at the top," Logan says."

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