Comment Re:It's an encryption layer (Score 1) 92
Those are all concerns you shouldn't have to worry about in a proper API. It should do those checks for you and return an error if something doesn't look right.
Comment Re:How is that startling? (Score 1) 413
Just how is the federal government in your face on a daily basis again?
Judging from my Facebook feed, President Obama has a personal vendetta against several people and messes with them daily.
Comment Re:CAcert (Score 1) 212
Most CAs are in the buisness of selling certs, startssl give some away for free but they clearly hope to upsell you to their paid offerings.
To get SSL everywhere it has to be trivial to get a cert, since we still lack a good micropayment system trivial basically means free. The existing CAs are not likely to help much with something that will disrupt their gravy train.
Submission + - Oracle finally release Java MSI file. 1
nosfucious writes: Oracle Corporation, one of the largest software companies and leading supplier of database and enterprise software quietly started shipping a MSI version of their Java Runtime (https://www.java.com/en/download/help/msi_install.xml). Java is the worlds leading software security vulnerability and keeping up with the frequent patches of nearly a job in itself. Added to this is the very corporate (read: Window on a large scale) unfriendly EXE packaging of the Java RTE. Sysadmins around the world should be rejoicing. However, nothing from Oracle is free. MSI versions of Java are only available to those with Java SE Advanced (and other similar products). Given that urgency and frequency of Java updates, what can be done to force Oracle release MSI versions publicly (and thereby reduce impact of their own bugs and improve Sysadmin sanity).
Swiss Scientists Discover DNA Remains Active After Space Journey and Re-entry 67
Zothecula writes: It may sound like the first chapter of a Quatermass thriller, but scientists from the University of Zurich have discovered that DNA can survive not only a flight through space, but also re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere and still remain active. The findings are based on suborbital rocket flights and could have considerable impact on questions about the origins of life on Earth and the problems of terrestrial space probes contaminating other planets.
Comment Re:Hardball negotiations not an effective strategy (Score 1) 189
70% of your market buying your stuff is great. 70% of your market liking the thing they bought from you last year and not deciding to upgrade is a problem. This was also Microsoft's problem with Windows XP - it wasn't great, but it was good enough for most people. When the iPhone came out, it and the other new smartphones with big touchscreens were a big change from what went before. Now, even a cheap smartphone like the Moto G is more than powerful enough for most users, so what's the incentive to upgrade?
Comment Re:Rather late (Score 1) 313
It depends a huge amount on what you're listening to. For about 90% of my music, I can't tell the difference between the original CD and 128kb/s MP3. A few things have noticeable artefacts that don't go away no matter how high you put the bitrate. Substitute 128kb/s AAC and that changes to over 95%. At 256kb/s AAC, I can't tell the difference for anything I own, but I've heard some recordings that hit pathological cases in the algorithms used for AAC and sound terrible at any bit rate (usually orchestral pieces with a single voice and only for short samples). With FLAC, you can 100% reconstruct the original, bit for bit, so you won't suffer from any unfortunate coincidence between your choice of music and the CODEC of choice.
The big advantage of a lossless compression though is for recompressing. For a long time I had a DVD player connected to my living room speakers that could play back MP3s, but not AAC. If I wanted to burn a CD-RW or DVD+RW to play on it, I had to recompress, which usually sounded noticeably worse than if I'd gone straight to MP3 from the source material. If I'd ripped everything as FLAC, then that recompression would not have introduced any new artefacts.
Submission + - Creative Commons to pass one billion licensed works (opensource.com)
Jason Hibbets writes: Sharing is winning. In 2015, Creative Commons is expected to pass one billion licensed works under the commons. Millions of creators around the world use CC licenses to give others permission to use their work in ways that they wouldn’t otherwise be allowed to. Those millions of users are the proof that Creative Commons works. But measuring the size of the commons has always been a challenge. Until now...
Submission + - Single Pixel Camera Takes Images Through Breast Tissue 1
KentuckyFC writes: Single pixel cameras are currently turning photography on its head. They work by recording lots of exposures of a scene through a randomising media such as frosted glass. Although seemingly random, these exposures are correlated because the light all comes from the same scene. So its possible to number crunch the image data looking for this correlation and then use it to reassemble the original image. Physicists have been using this technique, called ghost imaging, for several years to make high resolution images, 3D photos and even 3D movies. Now one group has replaced the randomising medium with breast tissue from a chicken. They've then used the single pixel technique to take clear pictures of an object hidden inside the breast tissue. The potential for medical imaging is clear. Curiously, this technique has a long history dating back to the 19th century when Victorian doctors would look for testicular cancer by holding a candle behind the scrotum and looking for suspicious shadows. The new technique should be more comfortable.
Submission + - Raspberry Pi and Coder by Google for beginners and kids (opensource.com)
Jason Hibbets writes: Coder is an experiment for Raspberry Pi, built by a small team of Googlers in New York. It converts a Raspberry Pi into a friendly environment for learning web programming. It is ideal for beginners and requires absolutely no experience with coding. Luis Ibanez, an engineer at Google, has written this getting started guide that shows how easy it is to set up Coder.
Comment Re:Bugs are DRM (Score 1) 171
Sounds good.
Comment Re:Bugs are DRM (Score 1) 171
I was happy to re-buy DK and DK2 from GOG when they were on special offer for $2 each: for that price, it's worth not having to find the CDs. The fact that they had pre-packaged Mac versions and I didn't have to futz with WINE myself was a bonus.
Comment Re:Math (Score 2) 413
You don't have to lower the math standards any, you just have to fail to raise them for the next 20 years. Even then it won't matter, because so many people are so bad at statistics and estimating, even when they know better.
Comment Re:How is that startling? (Score 3, Insightful) 413
Gerrymandering has a long, proud tradition in U.S. politics. I wouldn't be surprised if it resulted in advantage to one side about half the time.
It seems that political power is self-limiting. One side will occupy Congress for a while, until the other side gets fed up and makes a switch. As long as one party doesn't control the whole Congress plus the presidency, gridlock keeps us safe from most of the excesses of either side. It's only when one side runs the whole show that it's time to worry.
Comment Re:What Does This Mean (Score 4, Informative) 413
They created an algorithm that constructed constituency boundaries randomly, but in such a way that obeyed the rules. They constructed 100 such random maps. The average of these had 7-8 Democrat seats, 5-6 Republican seats. The actual results were 9 Republican, 4 Democrat, using maps drawn up by the Republicans (note: TFA didn't say what the results would have been with the previous set of maps, which had been drawn up by the Democrats). This means that, although the Republicans lost the popular vote in the state, and they lost the geographically weighted vote according to 100 randomly drawn electoral maps, they still ended up winning the state overall.
