Comment Re:So... (Score 1) 647
>A national firewall is clearly not going to block popular cloud storage providers.
eh, actually, I just noticed China seems to be blocking dropbox now....
Comcast Awarded the Golden Poo Award 286
ISoldat53 writes "The Consumerist has awarded Comcast the Golden Poo award for the worst company in America. From the article: 'After four rounds of bloody battle against some of the most publicly reviled businesses in America, Comcast can now run up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and hold its hands high in victory — it has bested everyone else to earn the title of Worst Company In America for 2010.'"
How Nintendo's Mario Got His Name
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harrymcc writes "In 1981, tiny Nintendo of America was getting ready to release Donkey Kong. When the company's landlord, Mario Segale, demanded back rent, Nintendo staffers named the game's barrel-jumping protagonist after him. Almost thirty years later, neither Nintendo — which continues to crank out Mario games — nor Segale — now a wealthy, secretive Washington State real estate developer — like to talk about how one of video games' iconic characters got his name and Italian heritage. Technologizer's Benj Edwards has researched the story for years and provides the most detailed account to date."
Comment Re:Who exactly is fighting back? (Score 1) 641
Taken out of context, yes. But scientist do not really need to be pro or against global change to get funding (I speak from experience here). You just write a grant, in which you claim you will solve the key questions.
And anyway, in general, your resulting paper can usually be free of any possible unfunded claims you made in the grant proposal (contrary perhaps to public perception, non-private grant agencies nearly never make any attempts to get you to change your conclusions, and this is unfortunately sometimes worse with private funded research. Now guess where we find most research that rejects climate change....)
I do not go second guessing my doctors desisions, please also trust your local climate scientist a bit. There should be checks and balances, but that has nothing to do with the current witch-hunt like attitude of some people.
Comment Re:Be sure to vote with your wallet (Score 1) 412
Ok, there is a lot of misconceptions here about the obsoleteness of nv.
The nouveau driver is based on 2 main information sources: 1) studying what the nvidia driver does, and 2) deobfuscating things the nv driver does.
The last thing has been very helpful in getting the newer cards to do modesetting for example. Usually nouveau could bring the card up just a few days after some quirck was added to nv to bring up the screen. Now, this info source is dropped. Reading mmiotraces from the blob can tell you similar things, but are a lot more difficult to make sense of and only 2-3 people can do this currently.
This will affect nouveau development, and may actually be a move by NVIDIA to hinder nouveau development (pure speculation this).
Central Anti-Virus For Small Business? 359
rduke15 writes "I'm trying to find a centrally managed anti-virus solution for a small business network, which has around 20 Windows XP machines with a Linux server. It is too big to manage each client manually. However, there is no no full-time IT person on site, and no Windows Active Directory server — just Linux with Samba. And the current solution with Symantec Endpoint Protection seems too expensive, and too complex for such a simple need. On the Linux server side, email is handled by amavisd and ClamAV. But the WinXP clients still need a real-time anti-virus for the USB disks they may bring to work, or stuff they download from their personal webmail or other sites. I'm wondering what others may be using in similar situations, and how satisfied they are with it."
Renowned Geneticist Analyzes Consumer DNA Tests 97
pdragon04 sends in the hardly surprising news that direct-to-consumer genetic testing isn't predicting diseases as well as they claim. "...[Francis] Collins, who played a central role in the Human Genome Project and is rumored to be the next head of the National Institutes of Health, announced at the Consumer Genetics Conference in Boston last week that he had had his genome analyzed [using a made-up name] by the big three of direct-to-consumer genetic testing: 23andMe, Navigenics, and DecodeMe. Collins said that sequence-wise, the tests 'appear to be highly accurate': there were almost no differences in the genotype information generated in the three different analyses. But there were significant differences in the numbers of genetic variations used to calculate disease risk, as well as the final risk score. ... For example, one company used 5 single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, to calculate risk for a particular disease, pronouncing Collins at low risk. Another used 10 SNPs, placing him at high risk, and the third used 15, concluding that he is at average risk."
Statistical Suspicions In Iran's Election 512
hoytak writes "An expert in electoral fraud, professor Walter Melbane, has released a detailed analysis (PDF) of available data in Iran's controversial election (summary here). While he did not find significant indications of fraud, he does note that all the deviations from the predicted model are in Ahmadinejad's favor: 'In general, combining the 2005 and 2009 data conveys the impression that a substantial core of the 2009 results reflected natural political process... [These] stand in contrast to the unusual pattern in which all of the notable discrepancies between the support Ahmadinejad actually received and the support the model predicts are always negative. This pattern needs to be explained before one can have confidence that natural election processes were not supplemented with artificial manipulations.'" In related news, EsonLinji notes reports in the Seattle PI and other sources that the US State Department has asked Twitter to delay system maintenance to prevent cutting off Iranians who have been relying on the service during the post-election crisis. And if you would like to help ease the communication crunch, reader RCulpepper tips a blog post detailing how to set up a proxy server for users with Iranian IP addresses.
Smelly Footed Student Wins Right To Study
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Teunis Tenbrook, A philosophy student with feet so smelly that he was thrown out of Erasmus University in Rotterdam, has won the right to attend lectures after a 10-year legal battle. Tenbrook was thrown out after complaints from professors and students that it was impossible to study with the smell from his feet. A Dutch court has ruled however, that having smelly feet is no excuse to ban a student from a university. The judge said, "Our considered opinion is that the professors and other students will just have to hold their noses and bear it." It looks like Mr. Tenbrook and his ten rancid piggies will finally get an education. Let's hope he learns about soap.
Comment Hobbits of course! (Score 1) 1397
The network at my parents home is "Mirkwood" with an old desktop called "Bilbo" and a laptop "Frodo".
The printer is of course "Sting".
I doubt my parents will ever understand, since they never read the books and even fell asleep watching the movie :O
Second Netbook Wave Begins 318
nerdyH writes "Asus is taking pre-orders for a netbook based on Intel's second-generation platform, the secret-shrouded N280/GN40 chipset. Early product specs confirm that the second wave of netbooks are likely to offer faster graphics and lower power use, along with room for much, much larger batteries. The N280 apparently integrates the northbridge and CPU, meaning that the GPU moves to 45nm process technology, the FSB gets replaced by an on-chip interconnect, and overall board real-estate drops to a third of what it was previously — hence the ability to stuff an 8,700mAh battery into a 3-lb. device. The right shift key is slightly bigger, too, though still no trackpoint pointer (guess I'll keep waiting)."
Why Do We Name Servers the Way We Do? 1397
jfruhlinger writes "If you use a Unix machine, it probably has a funny name. And if you work in an environment where there are multiple Unix machines, they probably have funny names that are variations on a theme. No, you're not the only one! This article explores the phenomenon, showing that even the CIA uses a whimsical server naming scheme." What are some of your best (worst?) naming schemes?
Comment missing option (Score 5, Funny) 504
I only call Cowboy Neal....... I really miss him in the polls ;)
Submission + - Your cell phone number is no longer unlisted (wisebread.com)
An anonymous reader writes: According to the Seattle Times, a locally-owned company named Intelius is putting together a cell phone directory that is supposed to be accurate. It costs $15 to search for an individual's cell phone number. That's right — for $15, your cell number can be given out to anyone.
You might not have heard of Intelius before, but they are one of those companies that touts their services in background checks. You may have seen ads or received spam emails warning you to do a background check on your date? That's Intelius. They also purchased a small company that does a lot of background check work for employers.
Kids Review the OLPC 193
A. N. Onymous sends us to OLPCNews for an account of kids' reactions to the OLPC XO, and comments: "My first impression is, it's just like when you give a kid a box of Lego." The video of a 10-year-old and his younger sister replacing a mobo is pretty cool.
