Comment Autism? (Score 2, Insightful) 369
What about people who have Autism or other disorders that cause them to express emotion differently? Are you going to lock me up just because I don't seem like a regular Joe Sixpack?
Comment BOINC (Score 2, Interesting) 655
He should've at least used the stolen laptops to run BOINC projects, that insensitive clod!
Submission + - One-Click-Submission to German terror watchlist (www.bka.de) 5
An anonymous reader writes: As the German daily Der Tagesspiegel reported today, the German federal criminal agency has a new strategy to catch terrorists: they put up an informational web page about the terrorist group "militante Gruppe" ("militant group") and now look at their web logs. If someone clicks on that link, his IP address will be investigated and he will be put on the terror watchlist.
It would be utter madness of us to ask you to click on THIS LINK to put a billion people on their list so we are not even
going to mention the URL. In case you
find it, do not click on it!
Thank you.
Submission + - Google Buys Mobile Social Network Zingku
HairyNevus writes: "Ina an attempt to provide more services for mobile phone users, Google has acquired the social networking company Zingku. Zingku allows people to send photos ans conduct polls via their mobile phone easier, and also allows businesses to send out "mobile flyers", advertisements. As of now, new Zingku account sign-ups have been frozen and all current accounts will be transferred to Google. The article also pointed out something interesting about Zingku's privacy policy, "It's privacy policy begins: 'The success of our business depends on maintaining your privacy. Also, our mothers brought us up properly so even if our business didn't depend upon protecting your privacy, we would STILL protect it because we would experience extreme guilt if we didn't.'""
Submission + - Demonoid Returns, well mostly
camperslo writes: The news on Demonoid sums it up: "We received a letter from a lawyer represeting the CRIA, they were threatening with legal action and we need to start blocking Canadian traffic because of this.
Thanks for your understanding, and sorry for any inconvenience." (typo is theirs)
As posted here, the Demonoid trackers were up yesterday, the website went live again today.
It's good to see the Green Demon alive and kicking (of course its pretty well swamped at the moment)
Thanks for your understanding, and sorry for any inconvenience." (typo is theirs)
As posted here, the Demonoid trackers were up yesterday, the website went live again today.
It's good to see the Green Demon alive and kicking (of course its pretty well swamped at the moment)
Submission + - Creative Labs' Vista driver team feeling stressed? (creativelabs.com) 2
regular_gonzalez writes: "While the X-Fi's issues under Vista have been widely reported, that doesn't prevent a flood of complaints pouring into the Creative Labs website, posted for all to see. What is more surprising is the employees' responses. A sampling:
Is Creative Labs obliged to treat even the most obnoxious of whiners with a certain level of respect, or is it refreshing to have a company actually state opinions that normally would be kept to themselves?"# The drivers will be released when we are good and ready and happy with them
# Bitching like a 5 year old won't magically solve all our problems on the drivers.
# Call us hopeless and whatever else all you like, noone else is going to fix these drivers but us, demoralizing us won't bring it faster
# There are already reasonably working drivers supplied with the card, legally our responsibility stops there, think yourselves lucky we even bother updating the drivers at all.
# Anymore of these derogatory posts and we might well just flush the whole XFi/Vista64 saga to the toilet and move on.
Submission + - How Much Does a New Internet Cost?
wschalle writes: Given the recent flurry of articles concerning ISP over subscription, increasing bandwidth needs, and lack of infrastructure spending on the part of cable companies, I'm forced to wonder, what is the solution? How much would a properly upgraded internet backbone cost? How long would it take to make it happen? Will the cable companies step up before Verizon's FiOS becomes the face of broadband in America?
Submission + - ZDNet : AMD Barcelona will be a disappointment (techarp.com)
crazyeyes writes: "George Ou of ZDNet has this to say about the performance of the AMD Barcelona :
Looks like AMD is in big trouble. Investors should be careful about a dip in stock prices when actual benchmark results are out."I can tell you right now that 2.0 GHz Barcelona will be disappointing compared to Intel Clovertown 80 watt E5335 or the low-voltage 50 watt L5335 2.0 Processor. It will likely be a little slower even at the same clock speed at 2.0 GHz for SPECint_rate2006. It will dominate the two socket space for SPECfp_rate2006 and based on numbers they posted at the analyst conference, the Barcelona 2.0 GHz quad-core in a dual-socket configuration will even beat an Intel 3.0 GHz quad-core Clovertown dual-socket server.
The IT Industry's Red Shift Theory 176
Stony Stevenson writes "Sun Microsystems' CTO, Greg Papadopoulos has come out with a Red Shift Theory for IT which posits that an 'elite group of companies are consuming inordinate amounts of IT infrastructure, well beyond most other businesses, and that their demand is growing exponentially. This trend, Papadopoulos maintains, has implications not just for IT's most insatiable consumers, but for the structure of the computing industry itself. It's not just about how many CPU cycles a company uses. Papadopoulos argues that red-shift companies will enjoy exponential business growth in the coming years. Blue-shift companies — those whose processing needs aren't exploding — will grow at about the same rate as GDP, he says.'"
Submission + - Google Throws Lead Paint on Movie Download Market 6
An anonymous reader writes: As promised Google shut down its video store Wednesday — and its DRM made sure all movie files purchased from the store ceased to funtion. This has sparked a firestorm of negative commentary from the Digerati who see it as pure theft. Cory Doctorow called it "...a giant, flaming middle finger, sent by Google and the studios to the customers who were trusting (as in dumb) enough to buy DRM videos". John Dvorak called it "old bait-and-switch tactics" where vendors make promises, but build-in the ability to reneg on those promises if they choose to do so later. Both Dvorak and Doctorow call for the judicial system to step in, but MP3 Newswire says that the abuse to consumer trust will do more damage to the paid download market than anything the courts could inflict. "As a consumer, if you purchase a digital movie file online only to have it unexpectedly repossessed you will probably think twice before ever buying any such download again. If you do consider it again it certainly won't be for the same price as before. Experience made these downloads worth far less to you. So what are feature film downloads that can be revoked at any time worth in the market place? To some Google Video customers the value of a movie download dropped all the way down to zero."
Submission + - A Pilot on Airline Security (hotair.com)
Paperweight writes: Dave Mackett, president of the Airline Pilots Security Alliance, recently wrote how unsafe and hole-ridden airline security still is, in spite of all the money being blown on it. There is simply no deployable technology that has a prayer of keeping a motivated, prepared terrorist out of the system. The US Transport Security Administration misses more than 90% of detectable weapons at passenger checkpoints even in their own tests. Until the mindset behind airline security is changed, using an airliner as a weapon of mass destruction is as easy today as ever.
Submission + - IPhones flooding Wireless LAN at Duke University (networkworld.com) 1
coondoggie writes: "The Wi-Fi connection on Apple's recently released iPhone seems to be the source of a big headache for network administrators at Duke University. The built-in 802.11b/g adapters on several iPhones periodically flood sections of the Durham, N.C. school's pervasive wireless LAN with MAC address requests, temporarily knocking out anywhere from a dozen to 30 wireless access points at a time. Campus network staff are talking with Cisco, the main WLAN provider, and have opened a held desk ticket with Apple. But so far, the precise cause of the problem remains unknown. "Because of the time of year for us, it's not a severe problem," says Kevin Miller, assistant director, communications infrastructure, with Duke's Office of Information Technology. "But from late August through May, our wireless net is critical. My concern is how many students will be coming back in August with iPhones? It's a pretty big annoyance, right now, with 20-30 access points signaling they're down, and then coming back up a few minutes later. But in late August, this would be devastating."
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/071607-duke- iphone.html"
Submission + - Migrating a city government to OpenOffice (techtarget.com)
E. Stride writes: "This case study covers a city government's migration from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice on a Linux network that was formerly running Unix. Find out what made this move successful."
Submission + - Future of Netradio may depend on DRM adoption (arstechnica.com)
Bearhouse writes: ars technica reports that the planned tripling of royalties for US-based net radios may be postponed, but at a price. From the article, "SoundExchange has offered to cap the $500 per channel minimum fee at $50,000 per year for webcasters who agree to provide more detailed reporting of the music that they play and work to stop users from engaging in 'streamripping' — turning Internet radio performances into a digital music library,". Could this mean a return to 'pirate radio', with sites moving offshore?
Submission + - Video Game Addiction or just Stupidity?
crystall writes: From Yahoo News: Nev. couple blame Internet for neglect
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070716/ap_on_re_us/ne glect_internet_addiction
Two young children suffered from neglect and the lamer parents blame "internet addiction". I won't argue about the validity of PC/Internet/Gaming addiction — I know it exists because I see it in my own home. But can it get this severe? Or are these idiots just looking for an excuse for the unexcusable? Discuss.
