Comment: Lyman-alpha blobs (Score 1) 412
Lyman-alpha blobs are among the largest objects in the universe. What causes them?
Comment: Botnet cloud? (Score 1) 91
Here's an idea for the new cloud entrepreneurs. Cultivate a botnet of 100K+ compromised PCs, then sell their spare cycles.
Comment: Re:Luckily... (Score 1) 239
It's good to think about security before we deploy rather than after, the old M$ model. If all messages originated by my car are digitally signed by a cert created specifically for my car by the car company and signed by them, I could be held legally responsible for the accuracy of those messages. If I hack my car's electronics to make it send erroneous messages, I could be held liable for any damages that might ensue. Any updates to the in-car software should be digitally signed by the originating manufacturer, and this signature validated by the in-car's BIOS equivalent before being accepted. Yes, there will be errors caused by faulty sensors and (gasp!) program bugs. But our own eyes are not faultless; should we then drive blindfold?
Comment: Can't kill the messenger (Score 1) 250
We've been chasing spammers for decades, like a dog chasing a car, with an equal lack of success. Why not skip over the spammers and go for the companies that use them to advertise? They can't be anonymous, else they would gain no benefit from advertising through spam. If we nail enough of them, market demand for spam adverts will dry up and spam merchants will have to find other employment, like handing out pamphlets to passing motorists at street intersections. At least then you can ride over them if they irritate you.
Comment: Pay as you go? (Score 1) 184
Excuse my ignorance, I don't live in the USA so I'm not involved (yet), but doesn't the underlying problem stem from the fact that US ISPs aren't allowed to bill subscribers per megabyte of bandwidth consumed? If subscribers paid for the bandwidth that they actually use, plus a fixed connection fee, the whole net neutrality debate might become totally irrelevant. Users who want to download gigabytes per day would no longer be a problem, they would be an opportunity. What's wrong with the old-fashioned idea of paying for what you use, rather than getting your neighbour to pay for it? Or is it more complicated than that?
"Dark energy" explained?->
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Tijaska
Tijaska writes "In 1998 astronomers discovered to their suprise that the universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate. The term "dark energy" has been coined to describe the mysterious, unknown force that is causing this acceleration. I have published a paper that claims to explain what dark energy is – plain old electrons, released from the accretion disks of black holes, while their matching protons, being heavier, get preferentially sucked into the black holes and swallowed by the singularities at their centres. Once there, the protons become sequestered, their positive charge invisible to the rest of the universe forever. Well, if not forever then at least for a very long time. The oldest galaxies, largely swallowed by the black holes at their centres by now, have released vast amounts of electrons over the ages, which have exanded into surrounding space, pushing the galaxies in these regions further away and giving rise to the huge voids that characterise the cosmos, as also described in this BBC report."
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Link to Original Source
Five Finger Keyboards->
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by
Tijaska
Tijaska writes "Mobile devices are becoming more capable all the time, but their small screens and keyboards limit their usefulness. This article shows ways in which five buttons located on the edges of a mobile could be used in combinations to generate 325 or many more different characters, making a full-sized keyboard unnecessary. If that sounds like a tall story, remember the case of the retired 93 year old telegraph operator who used a Morse key to send a text message faster than a teenager could send it via mobile phone (see here)."
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Use Cases On Steroids->
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by
Tijaska
Tijaska writes "After 60 years of trying we still struggle to build software that meets the users' needs, first time. It's hard for developers to understand users' needs, and hard for users to know what developers are building till it's delivered, then it's often too late to do more than apply band-aid. In my blog I talk of ways in which the humble use case can be extended to help users and developers understand one another better up-front, to prototype the proposed system, to kick-start the test scripts, and to start testing the software while it is only partly built. I also suggest that it would be nice if modeling tools allowed developers can parse the use case text and to link nouns to classes, verbs to methods, making it easier to see what pieces of the software will support each part of the use case, and which parts of the use case were forgotten."
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Link to Original Source