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Comment Re:Unfamiliar? (Score 1) 379

Plenty of examples out there of course but here's one involving /.'s old friend, the United Fruit Company. The UFC lobbied the US government to support the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état

After the expropriations began in 1953 the UFC began lobbying the U.S. government in an attempt to draw them into their confrontation with Arbenz. The U.S. State Department responded by, amongst other things, successfully seeking approved cuts in economic aid and cuts in trade, with devastating effect to Guatemala, since "85% of Guatemala's exports are sold in the country and 85% of their imports come from the U.S." Internal U.S. State Department documents stated that the cutoff would have to be done "quietly" because this was "a violation of the Non-intervention agreement, to which we are party... If it became obvious that we were in violation of this agreement, other Latin American governments would rally to the support of Guatemala

Source

Comment Best Easter Egg (Score 1) 233

The best easter egg I've ever come across was in the flight simulator B17 The Mighty Eighth II (anyone remember that?)

If you were to play the CD as you were to play a music CD, you would find that the 8th track is a Morse Code signal. This signal, once translated, spells, "L-Y-M-E-R-E-G-I-S" There is a town on the south England coast named "Lyme Regis." Start a recon flight to the area of that town (you may want to find it on a map of England first) and fly low along the beach keeping a sharp look out. Keep looking and you will eventually find a flying saucer landed on the beach and two aliens sitting in lounge chairs!! You should also be able to faintly hear some strange 50's music coming from their radio! Too funny, and a brilliant idea for an egg!

source: http://www.eeggs.com/items/20664.html

Comment Re:"Also revealed are MI6's London offices" (Score 2, Informative) 240

Following your link I found they've posted pictures of their headquarters on their website http://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/thames-house-image-gallery.html . You'd think any civilian taking pictures of the building would subsequently be subjected to a little chat with the law but there's no problem when they show it on their site in all it's glory from various angles...

Comment Apple is hardly promoting it as a dev platform yet (Score 2, Insightful) 315

It's pretty interesting the way developers are almost falling over themselves (if you believe the summary) to start developing for the iPhone. Build an attractive product and not only will the customers appear but also the Developers! Developers! Developers!. As a developer you'll need to buy an Apple computer for the privilege, and probably start learning Objective C, not an easy language to pick up when you're used to Java/C#. It's almost contrary to the idea usually associated with MS of making it easy for developers and the platform will succeed.
I'd imagine Apple is shifting quite a few new machines to iPhone developers who would otherwise still be developing on Windows/Java ME.

Operating Systems

Submission + - New 'immortal' OS in the works,aptly named Phantom (theregister.co.uk) 1

JCWDenton writes: "Dmitry Zavalishin is cooking up a new operating system. He calls it Phantom. Phantom is a different approach on the OS than any other out there, with the primary goal of being immortal. In Phantom, powering off the computer will not cause programs to lose state. They can pick up where they left off as soon as the machine is turned back on.
To accomplish this automatic state preservation, Phantom continuously snapshots system memory on to disk. At first glance, that seems like a big synchronization problem: All the programs running should have to pause while the snapshot process reads their internal state. However, if you design the operating system around this goal, the process isn't that intense. The fundamental competency of Phantom is creating this snapshot cheaply, without disturbing current processes."
Unfortunately, the article doesn't go into a lot of technical detail and instead tells us about flaws in the Linux development approach.

Government

Submission + - London police looking to install CCTV in pubs (theregister.co.uk)

JCWDenton writes: The Met Police got a short sharp rap over the knuckles yesterday, as the Office of the Information Commissioner questioned what looks very much like a blanket policy to force CCTV onto public houses in certain parts of London.

The story begins with a letter to the Guardian last week, from Nick Gibson. He is currently renovating Islington pub The Drapers Arms, after its previous owners allowed it to go insolvent and then disappeared.

In his letter, he argues that if he had merely taken over an existing licence, the police could not have imposed any additional conditions. However, because this was now a new licence, the police were able to make specific requests, including one particular request in respect of installing CCTV.

Windows

Submission + - French fighter planes grounded by computer virus (telegraph.co.uk)

JCWDenton writes: The Telegraphs writes:
"French fighter planes were unable to take off after military computers were infected by a computer virus, an intelligence magazine claims.

The aircraft were unable to download their flight plans after databases were infected by a Microsoft virus they had already been warned about several months beforehand.

At one point French naval staff were also instructed not to even open their computers.

Microsoft had warned that the "Conficker" virus, transmitted through Windows, was attacking computer systems in October last year, but according to reports the French military ignored the warning and failed to install the necessary security measures. "

Government

Submission + - Register warns of UK porn law going live (theregister.co.uk)

JCWDenton writes: "Unless you happen to have been living on Mars for the last year or so, you probably know that next week (January 26 to be precise) it will become a criminal offence (in England and Wales) to possess pictures that the government deems to be "extreme porn". You might also be aware of two diametrically opposed views on this legislation."

The article goes on explain that under RIPA encrypting your thought crime pics will end you up in jail as well.

Government

Submission + - Whistleblower: NSA spied on everyone, targeted jou (rawstory.com)

JCWDenton writes: Former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice, who helped expose the NSA's warrantless wiretapping in December 2005, has now come forward with even more startling allegations. Tice told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Wednesday that the programs that spied on Americans were not only much broader than previously acknowledged but specifically targeted journalists.
Portables

Submission + - New Zunes to take on Apple's iPod (bbc.co.uk)

JCWDenton writes: Microsoft has launched three new models of its Zune digital media player in an effort to compete with Apple's iPod.
The players — which come in 4GB, 8GB and 80GB models — have wi-fi so users can automatically download music, photos, and video from their computer.
It comes with a familiar circular touch-sensitive navigation button.
Microsoft is also launching a social networking site dubbed Zune Social to allow users to display and share music.

Television

Submission + - Sony is to sell 3mm thick OLED tv (reghardware.co.uk)

JCWDenton writes: Sony demo'd a series of OLED-based TVs at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this past January. Today, it said one of them [will] go on sale on 1 December — the first ever commercial OLED TV, the company claimed.
Dubbed the XEL-1, the 11in screen contains a display panel that's just 3mm thick.
The screens have a contrast ratio of a whopping 1,000,000:1 — considerably higher than most LCD and plasma TVs.

Software

Submission + - Microsoft launches Browser-based Word and Excel? (theregister.co.uk)

JCWDenton writes: In a bid to spin its web-based version of Office into contention with rival internet behemoth Google, Microsoft has said it will begin accepting applications for beta testing its web apps later this year.

There is one significant difference, however: unlike Google apps, Microsoft said users of its new service can only create or edit online documents if they have Office software already installed on their machines.

Microsoft said features of its Office Live Workspace would include allowing users to upload more than 1,000 documents to free personal websites.

Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft loses anti-trust appeal (bbc.co.uk)

JCWDenton writes: Microsoft has lost its appeal against a record 497m euro (£343m; $690m) fine imposed by the European Commission in a long-running competition dispute.

The European Court of First Instance upheld the ruling that Microsoft had abused its dominant market position.

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