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Science

Why the First Cowboy To Draw Always Gets Shot 398

Posted by timothy
from the more-guns-less-crime dept.
cremeglace writes "Have you ever noticed that the first cowboy to draw his gun in a Hollywood Western is invariably the one to get shot? Nobel-winning physicist Niels Bohr did, once arranging mock duels to test the validity of this cinematic curiosity. Researchers have now confirmed that people indeed move faster if they are reacting, rather than acting first."

+ - Laptop Warranty Repair Turnaround Time?->

Submitted by ConfrontationalGrayh
ConfrontationalGrayh (1199233) writes "What is a reasonable amount of time for a laptop warranty repair to be completed? I have a 6 month old laptop that has been at the manufacturer's repair center for 3 months, and I''m told that it'll be another month before the needed part even arrives. This is the third time that I've gotten the exact same story about the part arriving a month from now. When I questioned the manager at the manufacturer I was told that there are no guarantees as to when the laptop will be repaired. I also asked for a replacement and was denied. Can the warranty repair center just hold my laptop indefinitely?"
Link to Original Source
The Military

+ - US Seeks Strategic Deterrent against Cyberattacks 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that earlier this month, top Pentagon leaders gathered to simulate how they would respond to a sophisticated cyberattack aimed at paralyzing the nation’s power grids, its communications systems or its financial networks. The enemy had all the advantages: stealth, anonymity and unpredictability and no one could pinpoint the country from which the attack came, so there was no effective way to deter further damage by threatening retaliation. “We are now in the phase that we found ourselves in during the early 1950s, after the Soviets got the bomb,” said Joseph Nye, a professor at the Kennedy School at Harvard. “It won’t have the same shape as nuclear deterrence, but what you heard Secretary Clinton doing was beginning to explain that we can create some high costs for attackers." Deterrence involves making it clear to an adversary that the consequences of an attack would out-weigh its advantages and the deterrent will differ for different potential attackers says Air Force General Kevin Chilton. "You worry about North Korea doing bad things in the cyber domain, as well as you might worry about China potentially doing it, or some other country. So, you have to consider who it is you're trying to deter, and what it is they fear and value," Chilton says. This is what makes the Google-China standoff so fascinating. Google broke the silence that surrounds most cyberattacks and has said it will stop censoring searches conducted by Chinese, even if that means being thrown out of China. The threat alone is an attempt at deterrence: Google’s executives are essentially betting that Beijing will back down, An Obama administration official who has been dealing with the Chinese mused recently, “You could argue that Google came up with a potential deterrent for the Chinese before we did.”"

The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected. -- The Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd Edition, June 1972

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