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Comment USB to IDE or Trumpet Winsock (Score 2) 466

by TheCount22 (#49146431) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Old PC File Transfer Problem

You best bet is to get the drive hooked up to a USB to IDE adapter and copy the files.

If that doesn't work get and USB to RS232 cable and a NULL Modem Adapter and connect your two machines. Ideally you should setup Linux with pppd on the new computer. Run Trumpet Winsock on your old laptop and do a manual login and just hit ESC as soon as the terminal window shows up. Once that works install and ftp daemon on one of the two machines and a ftp client on the other side. Then just copy your files.

Comment Re:Population is not a real issue here (Score 1) 625

by TheCount22 (#44590063) Attached to: Aging Is a Disease; Treat It Like One

I noticed that everyone quickly jumped to the population problem. In fact this is not an issue at all.

Everything that grows exponentially has a doubling rate. One could easily argue that the real problem is in the newer generations since they will always represent significantly bigger population than the previous one. So the issue is not people not dying quickly, the problem is people being born. If everyone stopped having kids and would magically become biologically immortal the growth rate would be negative or 0% (due to the fact that people die in accidents).

Oh and by the way the only sustainable growth rate is exactly 0% not more. Anything more would mean it has a doubling rate. It's basic math.

It's true that population is not a big issue. But I am afraid the corrupt would use it to maintain their status indefinitely.

Submission + - Java concurrency is orders of magnitude harder than people think (ycombinator.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A user on StackOverflow claims to have lost $12 million of equipment due to a seemingly obscure behavior with concurrency in Java. A commenter on Hacker News writes

How can anyone program sanely in the presence of this: currentPos = new Point(currentPos.x+1, currentPos.y+1); does a few things, including writing default values to x and y (0) and then writing their initial values in the constructor. Since your object is not safely published those 4 write operations can be freely reordered by the compiler / JVM. [...] I'm not anywhere near smart or careful enough for that... I think I'll stick with Haskell.

Submission + - Syrian Electronic Army has proven one thing about the cybersecurity community

Submitted by Jeff Peters
Jeff Peters writes: From an editorial at HackSurfer describing the problem with cybersecurity that has emerged following the SEA hacks:

The state of the cybersecurity profession today, as well as the software industry it drives, is best described by using a religion analogy. Our business leaders are dependent on a largely crowded, confused, splintered, factious, self-righteous community of “holier than thou” experts and engineers convinced of the supremacy of their 10 billion differing points of view. If you've worked in the information technology industry as I have for 20 years (recovering software engineer), you may not admit it openly, but you know exactly what I’m talking about. One of my closest friends, a name most of you would recognize in the IT industry, once described most system administrators by saying:

“They’re either completely terrible or they’re self-righteous dicks. I always choose the dicks because at least I’ll be a little safer.”

Kinda captures it for me. “Sharing” and “plays well with others” not anywhere in the definition. I won’t even repeat his sentiments on most CISSPs.

Submission + - Media Campaign Against Snowden? (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by sl4shd0rk
sl4shd0rk writes: With Snowden living somewhere in Russia, and the US having very little course of action in way of damage control, it would seem the best US option would be to attack Snowden's credibility. Perhaps muddy the waters with something germane to System administration, yet somehow easily construed into a criminal act. According to Reuters, Snowden "began downloading documents" related to illegal US spying programs perhaps as early as April of 2012. Of course, the sources of this claim are "U.S. officials and other sources familiar with the matter" which roughly narrows it down from Gen. Michael Hayden to just about anyone who blogged on it. Fact of the matter is, without more details, Snowden could have accessed documents simply by performing backup routines or investigating file system issues. Things which happen quite regularly during the daily course of system adminstration. Without more specificity on the method in question, one is left with an impression from the headline, one of a nefarious circumstance.

Submission + - FISC Secret Court Chief Judge: We can't effectively oversee the NSA (washingtonpost.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Via the Washington Post: "The leader of the secret court that is supposed to provide critical oversight of the government’s vast spying programs said that its ability to do so is limited and that it must trust the government to report when it improperly spies on Americans. The chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said the court lacks the tools to independently verify how often the government’s surveillance breaks the court’s rules that aim to protect Americans’ privacy. Without taking drastic steps, it also cannot check the veracity of the government’s assertions that the violations its staff members report are unintentional mistakes."

President Obama: "We also have federal judges that we’ve put in place who are not subject to political pressure,” Obama said at a news conference in June. “They’ve got lifetime tenure as federal judges, and they’re empowered to look over our shoulder at the executive branch to make sure that these programs aren’t being abused.”

Not so much, Mr. President.

Submission + - Carbyne: A Form of Carbon Even Stronger Than Graphene 1

Submitted by Dialecticus
Dialecticus writes: Sebastian Anthony at ExtremeTech has written an article about research into the physical properties of carbyne, an elusive form of carbon. A new mathematical analysis by Mingjie Liu and others at Rice University suggests that carbyne may achieve double the strength of graphene, stealing its crown and becoming the strongest material known to man.

Submission + - Incredible Footage Shows a Perseid Meteor Exploding (universetoday.com)

Submitted by Nancy_A
Nancy_A writes: Photographer and digital artist Michael K. Chung said he couldn’t believe what he saw when he was processing images he took for a timelapse of the Perseid meteor shower this week. It appears he captured a meteor explosion and the resulting expansion of a shock wave or debris ring.

After this article was posted, Universe Today received more 'explody' footage from the Perseid meteor shower, which has been added to the article.

Submission + - Ubuntu Edge Now Most-Backed Crowdfunding Campaign Ever

Submitted by Volanin
Volanin writes: After nearly a month of its assumed happening, Ubuntu Edge has now passed the $10.2 million mark, thus making it the most pledged-to crowd-funder in history. While the Ubuntu Edge campaign is to be commended for reaching such a mammoth milestone as this, it can’t quite claim ultimate victory yet, since it's just short of making one-third of its $32 million goal with a little less than a week left. Can they do it?

Submission + - Aging Is a Disease. Treat It Like One. 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Burger Schmurger. In a Letter to Sergey Brin, Maria Konovalenko urges the Google founder to pursue his interest in the topics of aging and longevity. 'Defeating or simply slowing down aging,' writes Konovalenko, 'is the most useful thing that can be done for all the people on the planet.' Calling for research into longevity gene therapy, extending lifespan pharmacologically, and studying close species that differ significantly in lifespan, Konovalenko says 'it is crucial to make numerous medical organizations recognize aging as a disease. If medical organizations were to recognize aging as a disease, it could significantly accelerate progress in studying its underlying mechanisms and the development of interventions to slow its progress and to reduce age-related pathologies. The prevailing regard for aging as a "natural process" rather than a disease or disease-predisposing condition is a major obstacle to development and testing of legitimate anti-aging treatments. This is the largest market in the world, since 100% of the population in every country suffers from aging.'

Submission + - NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds" (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by NettiWelho
NettiWelho writes: The Washington Post: The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.
Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by law and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls.

Submission + - New GMail compose inspires user backlash 1

Submitted by s13g3
s13g3 writes: Yesterday, Google finally rolled out the "new compose" as a mandatory change to all users, eliminating the "old" compose option with no way to revert. The move has sparked such a significant amount of user backlash on Google's product forums that moderators are having to close hundreds of "I hate the new compose" threads as "duplicates" and are directing people to the main feedback thread, which is currently over 21 pages some 24 hours later. So far, there appears to be nothing in the way of a response or recognition from Google of the amount of hate the change has inspired, only an insistence that somehow the input of "Top Moderators" from their forums since October 2012 resulted in a number of "improvements" to the new compose in response, which supposedly makes it easier to use, but does nothing to address the laundry list of complaints and issues people have with it: simply put, no one likes the new compose, and significant numbers of users are threatening to abandon the service as a result of this forced change.

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