Comment Earth is like a big house (Score 1, Insightful) 296
This is what happens when people forget that our little planet is like a big house. When you "dump" your garbage, it's just getting moved from one room to another, unless you recycle it.
Comment Re:Let's see... from memory.... (Score 1) 130
I always get the egg from the nest up in the tree outside the house first.
Comment Re:Let me be the first one to say it ... (Score 1) 1870
My own view is that as a society we should be encouraging people "to work", rather than "have worked", copyright protections encourages people to stop working and live of their past actions. Look at some of the old rock bands going around, they make money of "Performance" (the present) rather than "recordings" (the past)
You have it backwards. People work to get paid. If you know you'll never ever get any compensation for your hard work, you'll not do "it" whatever it is. This is basic human behavior.
I grew up in a communist society where the person working diligently in a factory gets paid the exact same amount as the person who smokes and reads papers all day. Guess how much work everyone eventually strived toward?
If I know that after spending a year making some cool app that I will never receive a penny of compensation for it, I won't do it out of practicality. Even if I may be motivated by "good of humanity" arguments or just fame and recognition among my peers, I still have to bring food to the table, so to speak.
The Coming Censorship Wars 197
KentuckyFC writes "Many countries censor internet traffic using techniques such as blocking IP addresses, filtering traffic with certain URLs in the data packets and prefix hijacking. Others allow wiretapping of international traffic with few if any legal safeguards. There are growing fears that these practices could trigger a major international incident should international
traffic routed through these countries fall victim, whether deliberately or by accident (witness the prefix hijacking of YouTube in Pakistan last year). So how to avoid these places? A group of computer scientists investigating this problem say it turns out to be surprisingly difficult to determine which countries traffic might pass through. But their initial assessment indicates that the countries with the most pervasive censorship policies — China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia — pose a minimal threat because so little international traffic passes their way. The researchers instead point the finger at western countries that have active censorship policies and carry large amounts of international traffic. They highlight the roles of the two biggest carriers: Great Britain, which actively censors internet traffic, and the US, which allows warrantless wiretapping of international traffic (abstract)."
Comment Hormone imbalance usually means menopause right? (Score 1) 320
Or is it a new euphemism for cancer now?
You know, such as when some bigshot gets fired, the press release usually says so and so resigned to "spend more time with family."
$99 HD-DVD Player Coming Soon? 257
Frank writes "Rumors of the high definition holy grail persist. The latest is that Toshiba will be offering their basic HD-A2 player at $99 for one week only, beginning July 22. An added bonus is three free HD-DVD's."
Submission + - Lenses that bring everything into focus
Roland Piquepaille writes: "Scientists at the University of Michigan have developed a new lens device that will shrink huge light waves to pinpoints. The superlens looks like a plate and "is etched with a specific pattern. As the waves pass through the patterned lens, it is sculpted into different sizes and shapes. The lens does not refract, or bend the light waves — which is how conventional lenses work — but rather it reshapes the wave." This discovery could lead to CDs or DVDs holding 100 times more information than current ones. Read more for additional references and a picture of how this superlens focuses light."
Submission + - Where is the reset button? 1
mpickut writes: "Where has the reset button gone? I can't honestly remember the last computer I used that had a reset button. When did someone decide that we didn't need it anymore? At first is was just laptops that lacked it, but now Microsoft has even taken away the three finger salute (in Vista you have to go through an extra step just to get to task manager!)."
Bosworth On Why AJAX Failed, Then Succeeded 265
An anonymous reader writes "eWeek has a story describing a talk by former Microsoft developer Adam Bosworth, now a VP at Google, entitled 'Physics, Speed and Psychology: What Works and What Doesn't in Software, and Why.' Bosworth depicts issues with processing, broadband, natural language, and human behavior; and he dishes on Microsoft." Quoting: "'Back in '96-'97, me and a group of people... helped build stuff that these days is called AJAX,' Bosworth said. 'We sat down and took a hard look at what was going to happen with the Internet and we concluded, in the face of unyielding opposition and animosity from virtually every senior person at Microsoft, that the thick client was on its way out and it was going to be replaced by browser-based apps. Saying this at Microsoft back in '96 was roughly equivalent to wandering around in a fire wearing matches,' he said. 'But we concluded we should go and build this thing. And we put all this stuff together so people could build thin-client applications... Now you hear about AJAX all the time, but this was built in '97,' Bosworth said. Yet, AJAX failed for a variety of reasons, including some 'big mistakes.'"
Submission + - Press the Button, Crash the Data Center
miller60 writes: "Emergency Power Off (EPO) buttons on data center equipment figure prominently in many stories of downtime nightmares, including one this week at the Daily WTF involving Take Your Child to Work Day. Sometimes these stories involve janitors or night watchmen, and some believe these anecdotes about "red buttons" are either embellished or the technology equivalent of urban legends. Has this ever happened in your data center?"
