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Comment If you want to play and live near Jersey (Score 1) 107

If you live close to Central Jersey, there's an arcade called 8 on the Break in Dunellen that has about 10 pinball tables. They have old and new pinball tables, very well maintained, and the price per game is really cheap. Most are $0.50 a game. There's also a pinball league that's currently active and run tournaments there every Wednesday night.

Comment Re:When is a bank not a bank (Score 1) 775

1 time use numbers. Discovers expire the same month as your normal card.

Discover card's secure numbers aren't exactly one time use they're one vendor use. When you generate number X and use it to buy something from Y, the number is locked into Y and no one else can use it. A little less secure than one time use numbers but a lot more convenient in my opinion.

Patents

German Police Raid 51 CeBIT Stands Over Patent Claims 191

LeCaddie writes "Last week German investigators raided 51 exhibitor stands at CeBIT, the German information technology fair in Hanover, looking for goods suspected of infringing patents. Some 183 police, customs officers, and prosecutors raided the fair on Wednesday and carried off 68 boxes of electronic goods and documents including cellphones, navigation devices, digital picture frames, and flat-screen monitors. Of the 51 companies raided, 24 were Chinese. Most of the patents concerned were related to devices with MP3, MP4, and DVB standard functions for digital audio and video, blank CDs, and DVD copiers, police said." In the US there are no criminal penalties associated with patents, and such a raid could not be conducted, especially in the absence of a court ruling of infringement.
Education

Submission + - National Academies mount new defense of evolution

mpsmps writes: The National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine today released SCIENCE, EVOLUTION, AND CREATIONISM, a book laying out the latest and overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution and why non-scientific approaches do not belong in the science classroom. It also discusses how our understanding of evolution has been essential in scientific advances, such as the analysis of the SARS virus. You can download the press release or read the entire book for free online.
Privacy

Submission + - Google tracks you on torrent and porn sites 7

An anonymous reader writes: Think Google can only track you search habits? Think again. This site survey found that 40 of the top100 websites use Google-analytics as their web analysis software. Sites like mininova and youporn included. Google dominates the search engine world and now as a centralized service dominate the none-search website metrics. I am glad they do. I will be immortalized in Google databases as Google scientists of the future analyze my search habits, movies I like to see and types of girls I would like to meet.
Space

Is There Such a Thing As Absolute Hot? 388

AlpineR writes "Is there an opposite to absolute zero? An article from PBS's NOVA online explains several theories of the maximum possible temperature. Maybe it's the Planck temperature, 10^32 K, beyond which the known laws of physics break down. Or maybe just 10^30 K, the limit of some versions of string theory. If space is actually 11-dimensional then the maximum temperature could even be as low as 10^17 K, attainable by the Large Hadron Collider. Or maybe infinite temperature wraps around to negative temperature and absolute hot is the same as absolute cold."
Encryption

Submission + - Possibilities of reversing md5 hashes 1

maclizard writes: I'm sure there is a simple answer (probably 'no'), but I've researching md5 hashing and how there have been reports of such hashes being cracked to reveal passwords. My question is this: If a 32 character hash can be reversed to uncover a password, is it possible to reverse the hash of a large file, essentially reproducing it from its hash? Even if the answer is 'no', please elaborate.
Power

Submission + - Toshiba Builds Household Nuclear Reactor (peswiki.com)

sterlingda writes: "Toshiba has developed a new class of nuclear reactor 100 times smaller than a standard reactor. These micro sized nuclear reactors could be used to power large houses, apartment blocks or some city blocks. The new 200 kilowatt reactor, which is only 20 feet by 6 feet is engineered to be fail-safe and totally automatic and will not overheat. The new micro reactor uses no control rods to initiate the reaction, but uses reservoirs of liquid lithium-6, an isotope that is effective at absorbing neutrons. The whole whole process is self sustaining and can last for up to 40 years, producing electricity for only 5 cents per kilowatt hour, about half the cost of grid energy. Toshiba expects to install the first reactor in Japan in 2008 and to begin marketing the new system in Europe and America in 2009."
The Courts

Encryption Passphrase Protected by the 5th Amendment 537

Takichi writes "A federal judge in Vermont has ruled that prosecutors can't force the defendant to divulge his PGP passphrase. The ruling was given on the basis that the passphrase is protected under the 5th amendment to the United States Constitution (protection against self-incrimination)." The question comes down to, is your password the contents of your brain, or the keys to a safe.
Privacy

Submission + - Rogers Inserts Content Into Users' Webpages (bit-tech.net)

geekmansworld writes: It seems that Canadian ISP Rogers is inserting data into the HTTP streams returned by the websites requested by it's customers. Probably intended as a "feature", the unsolicited intrusion is nonetheless unsettling.
Education

Submission + - Texas & Florida to Revise Evolution Textbooks (wired.com)

eldavojohn writes: "Texas, the second biggest textbook market among the states, & Florida plan to revise their textbooks & education standards to make room for creationism. The bulk of this article looks at whether or not this is a cunning move by The Discovery Institute (Creationism's proponent in the scientific realm) to eventually move these ideas to a national level. From a letter from the National Center for Science Education, "The DI has a long history of involvement with the Texas standards process and with textbook adoption in Texas.... Because of the size of the Texas textbook market, and because many other states follow their lead, publishers generally follow whatever direction Texas points them in." This could be a step back to teaching evolution as merely a 'theory' and thereby allowing teachers to expound upon other possibilities like intelligent design, Beelzebub, Zoroaster or even The Flying Spaghetti Monster's Noodly appendage."

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