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Comment yes, people really are idiots (Score 0) 639

I work in the tech support field, as an industrial electrician. Trust me, people really are idiots. On the other hand, "people" build the computers that government people use. Those people should be capable of either securing the system from unknown USB devices or educating the users about the risks. At the end of the day, someone has to take responsibility for security.
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The Real 'Stuff White People Like' 286

Here's an interesting and funny look at 526,000 OkCupid users, divided into groups by race and gender and all the the things each groups says it likes or is interested in. While it is far from being definitive, the groupings give a glimpse of what makes each culture unique. According to the results, white men like nothing better than Tom Clancy, Van Halen, and golfing.
Transportation

Porsche Unveils 911 Hybrid With Flywheel Booster 197

MikeChino writes "Porsche has just unveiled its 911 GT3 R Hybrid, a 480 horsepower track vehicle ready to rock the 24-hour Nurburgring race this May. Porsche's latest supercar will use the same 911 production platform available to consumers today, with a few race-ready features including front-wheel hybrid drive and an innovative flywheel system that stores kinetic energy from braking and then uses it to provide a 160 horsepower burst of speed. The setup is sure to offer an advantage when powering out of turns and passing by other racers."
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Prolonged Gaming Blamed For Rickets Rise 254

superapecommando writes "Too many hours spent playing videogames indoors is contributing to a rise in rickets, according to a new study by doctors. Professor Simon Pearce and Dr Tim Cheetham of Newcastle University have written a paper in the British Medical Journal which warns of the rickets uptake – a disease which sufferers get when deficient in Vitamin D. The study boils down to the fact that as more people play videogames indoors they don't get enough sunlight and this has meant the hospitals are now having to combat a disease that was last in the papers around the time Queen Victoria was on the throne." At least the kids are eating enough snacks with iodized salt that we don't have to worry about goiters.
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Police Called Over 11-Year-Old's Science Project 687

garg0yle writes "Police in San Diego were called to investigate an 11-year-old's science project, consisting of 'a motion detector made out of an empty Gatorade bottle and some electronics,' after the vice-principal came to the conclusion that it was a bomb. Charges aren't being laid against the youth, but it's being recommended that he and his family 'get counseling.' Apparently, the student violated school policies — I'm assuming these are policies against having any kind of independent thought?"
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Best Man Rigs Newlyweds' Bed To Tweet During Sex 272

When an UK man was asked to be the best man at a friend's wedding he agreed that he would not pull any pranks before or during the ceremony. Now the groom wishes he had extended the agreement to after the blessed occasion as well. The best man snuck into the newlyweds' house while they were away on their honeymoon and placed a pressure-sensitive device under their mattress. The device now automatically tweets when the couple have sex. The updates include the length of activity and how vigorous the act was on a scale of 1-10.
Graphics

DX11 Tested Against DX9 With Dirt 2 Demo 201

MojoKid writes "The PC demo for Codemasters' upcoming DirectX 11 racing title, Dirt 2, has just hit the web and is available for download. Dirt 2 is a highly-anticipated racing sim that also happens to feature leading-edge graphic effects. In addition to a DirectX 9 code path, Dirt 2 also utilizes a number of DirectX 11 features, like hardware-tessellated dynamic water, an animated crowd and dynamic cloth effects, in addition to DirectCompute 11-accelerated high-definition ambient occlusion (HADO), full floating-point high dynamic range (HDR) lighting, and full-screen resolution post processing. Performance-wise, DX11 didn't take its toll as much as you'd expect this early on in its adoption cycle." Bit-tech also took a look at the graphical differences, arriving at this conclusion: "You'd need a seriously keen eye and brown paper envelope full of cash from one of the creators of Dirt 2 to notice any real difference between textures in the two versions of DirectX."
Censorship

Submission + - Delete 'em all and let god sort it out (arstechnica.com) 2

An anonymous reader writes: Exetel, an Australian ISP, has a novel approach to the possibility that copyright material might be hosted on its servers.

It just runs a cron job every night to silently delete all media files.

Yes, you read that right, all .avi, .mp3, .wmv, and .mov files, plus files on another sekrit list of extensions which you're not allowed to know about. "All formats are fair game", warn their admins.

And users don't even get notified it's happened. You wake up in the morning, the files are gone. Then I guess you have to find your way to "Why do my media files keep getting deleted from my free web space?" in their FAQ and take it from there.

Talk about a chilling effect. You can be exempted from their Kafaesque cron job if you sign a kind of Loyalty Oath swearing you own the copyright or have the permission of the owner. So, no fair use then?

They say they're doing it to avoid legal problems, quoting universal v cooper where an Aussie ISP was found liable for encouraging piracy. Only thing is, that case involved a commercial website called mp3s4free which did nothing but offer copyrighted material, and the hosting indisputably company knew all about it, choosing to fight the case on the basis that they didn't host the files, just linked to them.

Copyright law and the internet is a complex subject, but hell, this is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

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