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Comment Windows Phone != Windows (Score 1) 307

by tepples (#48931775) Attached to: The iPad Is 5 Years Old This Week, But You Still Don't Need One

There's Instagram, Vine and Snapchat clients for Windows

...Phone. I visited with Windows 8.1 and got these:

You can use the whatsapp web client on your device so long as you have the app on a smartphone to register.

From the Android download page: "Tablet devices are not supported". I have no smartphone. Is a smartphone still a luxury, or has it become a necessity?

And as I said you can run the Android apps in bluestacks.

Is BlueStacks based on Google Play or AOSP? Android distributions based on AOSP lack Google Play Store and thus cannot download Google Play Store-exclusive applications. In any case, it appears that BlueStacks is something that "everyone's gonna have to install" just as Flash Player and Java used to be; did I miss something in my assessment?

Comment Re:Power Costs (Score 2) 258

by TWX (#48931751) Attached to: Proposed Disk Array With 99.999% Availablity For 4 Years, Sans Maintenance
For colocated space, yes.

For an organization like the one I work for, with server room space to spare, it wouldn't be too bad. We could probably triple our rackspace dedicated to disk and still have room to spare, and we have the HVAC to match. That's kind of what happens when equipment gets more condensed and virtualization enters the fray. Can't virtualize a storage array obviously, but can replace the space that application servers took with storage as the space is freed up.

Comment Re:Sticker shock of a new computer (Score 1) 307

by tepples (#48931641) Attached to: The iPad Is 5 Years Old This Week, But You Still Don't Need One

Laying that complaint at the iPad is like whining that you can't carry 4 people on the motorcycle you just purchased...

When you need to haul people, you can take the bus. What's the computing equivalent of public transit? And does it have the same drawback of not operating at night or on Sunday?

Comment Re:Twice 8:9 (Score 1) 307

by tepples (#48931625) Attached to: The iPad Is 5 Years Old This Week, But You Still Don't Need One

Side by side is pretty useless when your windows are 512x300

An 80-column-wide window with a 6-pixel-wide font is 480xsomething inside the chrome, which means two 80-column-wide windows can comfortably fit side-by-side.

On Windows RT you can split the windows and you don't end up with a bunch of useless chrome.

On Windows RT you also can't run a compiler and its output.

Submission + - Canada Upholds Net Neutrality Rules in Wireless TV Case (michaelgeist.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Canada's telecom regulator has issued a major new decision with implications for net neutrality, ruling that Bell and Videotron violated the Telecommunications Act by granting their own wireless television services an undue preference by exempting them from data charges. Michael Geist examines the decision, noting that the Commission grounded the decision in net neutrality concerns, stating the Bell and Videotron services "may end up inhibiting the introduction and growth of other mobile TV services accessed over the Internet, which reduces innovation and consumer choice."
Data Storage

Proposed Disk Array With 99.999% Availablity For 4 Years, Sans Maintenance 258

Posted by timothy from the with-enough-disks-all-rooms-are-full dept.
Thorfinn.au writes with this paper from four researchers (Jehan-François Pâris, Ahmed Amer, Darrell D. E. Long, and Thomas Schwarz, S. J.), with an interesting approach to long-term, fault-tolerant storage: As the prices of magnetic storage continue to decrease, the cost of replacing failed disks becomes increasingly dominated by the cost of the service call itself. We propose to eliminate these calls by building disk arrays that contain enough spare disks to operate without any human intervention during their whole lifetime. To evaluate the feasibility of this approach, we have simulated the behaviour of two-dimensional disk arrays with N parity disks and N(N – 1)/2 data disks under realistic failure and repair assumptions. Our conclusion is that having N(N + 1)/2 spare disks is more than enough to achieve a 99.999 percent probability of not losing data over four years. We observe that the same objectives cannot be reached with RAID level 6 organizations and would require RAID stripes that could tolerate triple disk failures.
Australia

The Quantum Experiment That Simulates a Time Machine 139

Posted by timothy from the already-been-done dept.
KentuckyFC writes One of the extraordinary features of quantum mechanics is that one quantum system can simulate the behaviour of another that might otherwise be difficult to create. That's exactly what a group of physicists in Australia have done in creating a quantum system that simulates a quantum time machine. Back in the early 90s, physicists showed that a quantum particle could enter a region of spacetime that loops back on itself, known as a closed timelike curve, without creating grandfather-type paradoxes in which time travellers kill their grandfathers thereby ensuring they could never have existed to travel back in time in the first place. Nobody has ever built a quantum closed time-like curve but now they don't have to. The Australian team have simulated its behaviour by allowing two entangled photons to interfere with each other in a way that recreates the behaviour of a single photon interacting with an older version of itself. The results are in perfect agreement with predictions from the 1990s--there are no grandfather-type paradoxes. Interestingly, the results are entirely compatible with relativity, suggesting that this type of experiment might be an interesting way of reconciling it with quantum mechanics.

Submission + - The Quantum Experiment That Simulates A Time Machine

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: One of the extraordinary features of quantum mechanics is that one quantum system can simulate the behaviour of another that might otherwise be difficult to create. That's exactly what a group of physicists in Australia have done in creating a quantum system that simulates a quantum time machine. Back in the early 90s, physicists showed that a quantum particle could enter a region of spacetime that loops back on itself, known as a closed timelike curve, without creating grandfather-type paradoxes in which time travellers kill their grandfathers thereby ensuring they could never have existed to travel back in time in the first place. Nobody has ever built a quantum closed time-like curve but now they don't have to. The Australian team have simulated its behaviour by allowing two entangled photons to interfere with each other in a way that recreates the behaviour of a single photon interacting with an older version of itself. The results are in perfect agreement with predictions from the 1990s--there are no grandfather-type paradoxes. Interestingly, the results are entirely compatible with relativity, suggesting that this type of experiment might be an interesting way of reconciling it with quantum mechanics.

Submission + - Wi-Fi Map App Lets Users Share Passwords For Nearby Wi-Fi Networks

Submitted by blottsie
blottsie writes: Wi-Fi Map functions similarly to George Costanza’s infamous iToilet public-restroom finder, but instead of toilets, it sniffs out Wi-Fi networks. It gives users access to a huge trove of hotspots worldwide, thanks to a cohort of 7 million users who have crowdsourced the app’s entire database of 2.1 million entries and counting.

Submission + - Telomere-Lengthening Procedure Turns Clock Back Years in Human Cells (gizmag.com) 2

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have developed a new procedure to increase the length of human telomeres. This increases the number of times cells are able to divide, essentially making the cells many years younger. This not only has useful applications for laboratory work, but may point the way to treating various age-related disorders – or even muscular dystrophy.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: When and how did Europe leapfrog the US for internet access?

Submitted by rsanford
rsanford writes: In the early and middle 90's I recall spending countless hours on IRC "Trout-slapping" people in #hottub and engaging in channel wars. The people from Europe were always complaining about how slow their internet was and there was no choice. This was odd to me, who at the time had 3 local ISPs to choose from, all offering the fastest modem connections at the time, while living in rural America 60 miles away from the nearest city with 1,000 or more people. Was that the reality back then? If so, what changed, and when?

Submission + - UK broadcaster Sky to launch mobile service (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: UK pay-TV firm Sky is launching a mobile phone service next year in partnership with O2's Spanish parent Telefonica. Sky will use Telefonica UK's wireless network, enabling the satellite broadcaster to offer mobile voice and data services for the first time.

It takes Sky into the battle for "quad play", adding mobile to its existing services of internet, landline and TV. Offering all four services is seen as the next big UK growth area for telecoms firms and broadcasters.

(I'd love for you to plug my blog post on the matter, as an analyst in this space, but I don't think that's how this works! :) http://linkd.in/1Dc6QUI )

Submission + - Researcher claims proof that Isis is funding itself via Bitcoin (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A researcher from a Singapore-based research group claims to have found an Isis 'fundraising website' based around Bitcoin, allegedly fulfilling the promise of the document sent to Sky News last year, which claimed that Isis cells would soon favour a combination of Bitcoin, Dark Wallet and the 'Dark Net' (Tor, I2P, Freenet, iprediaOS and others) in order to maintain a circulation of funding obscured from government eyes. Speaking to Israeli newspaper Haaretz [http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/.premium-1.639542 — PAYWALLED], Ido Wulkan from Simulation Software & Technology, who found the alleged site by gaining access to a closed Turkish forum, said: "There was smoke, and now we have found the fire,"
Security

Georgia Institute of Technology Researchers Bridge the Airgap 86

Posted by timothy from the always-type-in-gibberish dept.
An anonymous reader writes Hacked has a piece about Georgia Institute of Technology researchers keylogging from a distance using the electromagnetic radiation of CPUs. They can reportedly do this from up to 6 meters away. In this video, using two Ubuntu laptops, they demonstrate that keystrokes are easily interpreted with the software they have developed. In their white paper they talk about the need for more research in this area so that hardware and software manufacturers will be able to develop more secure devices. For now, Faraday cages don't seem as crazy as they used to, or do they?
Crime

Why ATM Bombs May Be Coming Soon To the United States 378

Posted by samzenpus from the almost-worth-the-troub;e dept.
HughPickens.com writes Nick Summers has an interesting article at Bloomberg about the epidemic of 90 ATM bombings that has hit Britain since 2013. ATM machines are vulnerable because the strongbox inside an ATM has two essential holes: a small slot in front that spits out bills to customers and a big door in back through which employees load reams of cash in large cassettes. "Criminals have learned to see this simple enclosure as a physics problem," writes Summers. "Gas is pumped in, and when it's detonated, the weakest part—the large hinged door—is forced open. After an ATM blast, thieves force their way into the bank itself, where the now gaping rear of the cash machine is either exposed in the lobby or inside a trivially secured room. Set off with skill, the shock wave leaves the money neatly stacked, sometimes with a whiff of the distinctive acetylene odor of garlic." The rise in gas attacks has created a market opportunity for the companies that construct ATM components. Several manufacturers now make various anti-gas-attack modules: Some absorb shock waves, some detect gas and render it harmless, and some emit sound, fog, or dye to discourage thieves in the act.

As far as anyone knows, there has never been a gas attack on an American ATM. The leading theory points to the country's primitive ATM cards. Along with Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, and not many other countries, the U.S. doesn't require its plastic to contain an encryption chip, so stealing cards remains an effective, nonviolent way to get at the cash in an ATM. Encryption chip requirements are coming to the U.S. later this year, though. And given the gas raid's many advantages, it may be only a matter of time until the back of an American ATM comes rocketing off.

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