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Comment Re:Comparing Apples to Apples (Score 1) 171

by ASkGNet (#26007355) Attached to: A Quantum Linear Equation Solver

Let's say the probability is 1/2. The solution to the system can be verified in polynomial time. If the solution is incorrect, run the algorithm again.

After you run it N times, the probability of error is 1/(2^N), and you only wasted polynomial time on verification. Clearly, when your probability of error is smaller than the cardinality of possible outcomes, the algorithm will perform as designed in a sane amount (polynomial) of time.
PHP

PHP Gets Namespace Separators, With a Twist 523

Posted by Soulskill from the or-maybe-more-of-a-slant dept.
jeevesbond writes "PHP is finally getting support for namespaces. However, after a couple hours of conversation, the developers picked '\' as the separator, instead of the more popular '::'. Fredrik Holmström points out some problems with this approach. The criteria for selection were ease of typing and parsing, how hard it was to make a typo, IDE compatibility, and the number of characters."

Comment Re:Jail? (Score 1) 171

by arieswind (#23197544) Attached to: Companies To Be Liable For Deals With Online Criminals
hate to rain on your sony crusade, but the person who would end up in jail is the person who was responsible for running the check. that may be a salesman, or a manager, or whoever. when it comes to this kind of fine/jail time, there is a lot of finger pointing and assigning blame, and companies will go to great lengths to make sure the blame is placed right. granted, this is more likely to be applied to larger purchases than your 20$ book purchase off amazon.
Google

Submission + - Google sued for $5b for crimes against humanity (theregister.co.uk) 2

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "A Pennsylvania crusader has slapped Google with a $5bn lawsuit, claiming that the world's largest search engine is endangering his personal safety.

With a suit filed in federal court, Dylan Stephen Jayne insists that the company is guilty of "crimes against humanity" because its name turns up when his social security number is scrambled and turned upside down.

By calling itself Google, Jayne argues, Google has exposed him to attack by an army of culturally diverse, net-savvy terrorists. "A person regardless of race or religion that wishes to cause acts of terrorism would look for social security numbers that are made readily available on the public use databases," his suit reads.

And he's adamant that if Google claims ignorance, many people could end up dead or buck naked. "The 'I don't know' defense obviously is a waste of money, time, and puts the lives of Americans and illegal aliens at risk of death or serious undress.""
Businesses

12 Year Old Gets $6.5M for Gaming Company 180

Posted by samzenpus from the that's-a-lot-of-candy dept.
Bayscribe writes "A Silicon Valley company co-founded by a 12-year-old has just raised $6.5 million in venture capital. PlaySpan, based in Santa Clara, Calif. says it offers game publishers a technology that lets users make payments and shop for other items. It calls itself the first "publisher-sponsored in-game commerce network." Arjun Mehta, a 6th grader, says on his Web site that he is passionate about software that can make the game experience more "rewarding," and that he started the company last year in his garage. He paid for it from earnings made from selling online game items he won."

US Government Checking Up On Vista Users? 291

Posted by Zonk from the security-theatre-in-your-home dept.
Paris The Pirate writes "This article at Whitedust displays some very interesting logs from Vista showing connections to the DoD Information Networking Center, United Nations Development program and the Halliburton Company; for no reason other than the machine was running Vista. From the article 'After running Vista for only a few days — with a complete love for the new platform the first sign of trouble erupted. I began noticing latency on my home network connection — so I booted my port sniffing software and networking tools to see what was happening. What I found was foundation shaking. The two images below show graphical depictions of what has and IS trying to connect to my computer even in an idle state'."
Red Hat Software

Submission + - Fedora 7 Released!

Submitted by Vertana
Vertana writes: After being developed for 6 months, the Fedora Project today has released the 7th release of Fedora (formerly Fedora Core). New in this release are Fast User Switching, the merging of the repositories (Core and Extras are now all in Core), faster package management, as well as more robust hardware detection. Read more about it here.

Feed Eben Moglen: GPLv3 not about MS and Novell (newsforge.com)

From feed by nffeed
One of the highlights of my visit to San Diego for the Red Hat Summit was the opportunity to sit down one-on-one with Professor Eben Moglen. From that interview, we have selected six segments on various topics for your viewing pleasure, and will be publishing one each day this week. First up, an explanation of all the things that GPLv3 is about other than the MS/Novell deal.
Software

Submission + - Is parallel programming just too hard?

Submitted by pcause
pcause writes: There has been a lot of talk recently about the need for programmers to shift paradigms and begin building more parallel applications and systems. The need to do this and the hardware and systems to support it have been around for a while, but we haven't seen a lot of progress. The article says that gaming systems have made progress, but MMOGs are typically years late and I'll bet part of the problem is trying to be more parallel/distributed.

Since this discussion has been going on for over a decade with little progress in terms of widespread change, one has to ask is parallel programming just too difficult for most programmers? Are the tools inadequate or perhaps is it that it is very difficult to think about parallel systems. Maybe it is a fundamental human limit. Will we really see progress in the next 10 years that matches the progress of the silicon?
Security

Submission + - Dolphin Stadium Site Compromised to Deliver Trojan

Submitted by
MrQuentin
MrQuentin writes: "ExtremeTech reports that the website of Dolphin Stadium (where the Superbowl will take place on Sunday) has been compromised. The homepage will execute malicious Javascript code that delivers a remote exploit to Microsoft Windows users, according to findings by Websense Security Labs."

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