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Comment Origin of that statement (Score 1) 122

by Kanel (#34109748) Attached to: Fermilab Confirms Evidence of 4th Flavor Neutrino

Symmetry in this case refers to this: If you take a particle or a diagram describing a particle interaction and "flip something", you get something new that is still valid. Take a proton and flip the charge and you get an anti-proton for instance. Because of this symmetry, matter and anti-matter behave in exactly the same way, or so we belive. your particle and your the flipped version decay in the same way for instance.

What physicicst discovered over the last century was that it's not enough to flip the charge to make this valid in all cases. You have to flip charge, direction of time and flip something called "parity". Flipping the direction of time means simply to draw a feynman diagram of a particle collision or interaction on an overhead foil so that time runs from left to right and then turn it backwards. That's the mirror-image of the interaction.
But as I said you have to flip both time, parity and charge to get a valid diagram, and that's the origin of the term "an antiparticle is a particle travelling backwards in time"
Advertising

Submission + - Fighting ad blockers with captcha ads (newscientist.com) 1

Submitted by krou
krou writes: Living in an ad-free internet thanks to ad blockers? That could be a thing of the past if software firm NuCatcha has their way: make captchas into ads. 'Instead of the traditional squiggly word that users have to decipher, the new system shows them a video advert with a short message scrolling across it. The user has to identify and retype part of the message to proceed. Companies including Electronic Arts, Wrigley and Disney have already signed up.'

Comment Adobe, more like it (Score 1) 255

by Kanel (#33958696) Attached to: The Case For Apple Buying Facebook

It seems more probable that Apple will try to buy Adobe, for two reasons:
* Adobe has been central to Apple/Mac for years, with its Photoshop software. It helped create the identity of the mac and Steve Jobs want control of the whole value chain
* Steve Jobs has been talking down the Adobe stock for a long time, with his complaints about the Flash software.

Submission + - German ascent ascribed to lack of copyright (spiegel.de)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In No Copyright Law, The Real Reason for Germany's Industrial Expansion, Frank Thadeusz presents the work of economic historian Eckhard Hoffner, who argues that Germany's ascent relative to other nascent industrial nations like England and France was due in large part to Germany's lack of copyright law.

The German proliferation of knowledge created a curious situation that hardly anyone is likely to have noticed at the time. Sigismund Hermbstädt, for example, a chemistry and pharmacy professor in Berlin, who has long since disappeared into the oblivion of history, earned more royalties for his "Principles of Leather Tanning" published in 1806 than British author Mary Shelley did for her horror novel "Frankenstein," which is still famous today.
Google

Submission + - Parked Domains: Malware's Hidden Long Tail (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: They're the dusty corners of the Web: so-called "parked" domains. But these little trafficked sites are attracting the attention of security experts, who say that it's time for hosting firms and others that profit from them to clean up malware infections that may be exposing millions of Web users to attacks. The topic of what to do about the millions of parked domains was put back on the front burner this week after Web hosting firm Network Solutions acknowledged, on Monday, that unknown hackers had compromised a popular Web template it offered to customers, placing code in a widget to serve up malicious content from hundreds of thousands — perhaps millions of parked Web domains that the company manages. The company declined to say how long the sites had been serving the malicious content, but the mass compromise may go back more than eight months, to a breach that first came to light in January, 2010.

A spokesperson for Google said that the company has systems to help detect parked domains, and will often not show them in the company's search index. "If they do appear in the index, they are scanned with the same technology we use on other sites to help detect and flag malware and phishing attempts," the spokesman said.

Some are suggesting tougher approaches. Huang and other Armorize researchers have suggested that search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing stop crawling parked domains to reduce even the small amounts of traffic that make their way to the parked pages -especially since visitors to such mothballed pages will often not bother to report when are subject to an attack. Daswani notes that Web sites already face a still penalty for infection: black listing by Google and other search engines.
Idle

Submission + - Google Becomes Evil, The Video

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Next Media, the awesome Taiwanese animation shop that turns current events like the Tiger Woods beatdown into videos, skewers Google with their latest offering. Envisioning a world in which Google-deployed secret spy planes pick up where Street View cars left off, Google's Domination Of The World And Loss Of Mojo also includes a scene with Google CEO Eric Schmidt making a pact with the devil.
Programming

Submission + - Throwing Out Software That Works

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Just as the iPhone rendered circa-2007 smartphones obsolete, points out Marco Arment, the iPad is on the verge of doing the same to circa-2010 netbooks. Should this succeed, cautions Dave Winer, we may be entering an era of deliberate degradation of the user experience and throwing overboard of software that works, for corporate reasons. Already, Winer finds himself having to go to a desktop machine if he wants to view web content that's inaccessible with his iPhone and iPad. 'There was no bottleneck for software in the pre-iPad netbooks,' notes Dave. 'It matters. What I want is the convenient form factor without the corporate filter. It's way too simplistic to believe that we'll get that, but we had it. That's what I don't like — deliberate devolution.'
Privacy

Submission + - Court OKs Covert iPhone Audio Recording (wired.com)

Submitted by Tootech
Tootech writes: Coming soon to an IPhone commercial soon will be apple saying "want to secretly record coversation without people knowing and have it stand up in court, well there's an app for that" Well according to a lawsuit filed against someone, A decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which involves a civil lawsuit over a secret audio recording produced from the 99-cent Recorder app, mirrors decisions in at least three other federal appeals courts.

Using an iPhone to secretly record a conversation is not a violation of the Wiretap Act if done for legitimate purposes, a federal appeals court has ruled.
The defendant must have the intent to use the illicit recording to commit a tort of crime beyond the act of recording itself,” (.pdf) the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled.
Friday’s decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which involves a civil lawsuit over a secret audio recording produced from the 99-cent Recorder app, mirrors decisions in at least three other federal appeals courts.

The lawsuit concerns a family dispute over the making of a dying mother’s will. Days before the Connecticut woman died, her son secretly recorded a kitchen conversation between the son, mother, stepfather and others over how to handle her estate after her death.
Businesses

Submission + - Grand Theft Auto maker is insolvent (techworld.com) 1

Submitted by ChiefMonkeyGrinder
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes: One of Scotland and the UK's most important games development firms, Realtime Worlds, has gone into administration. Realtime Worlds developed Grand Theft Auto, Lemmings and, its latest game, All Points Bulletin (APB). "As Scotland’s largest games development outfit, until recent lay-offs employing 250 people, its possible demise would be a technological disaster to match the worst days in the decline of silicon glen."

Submission + - iD's Wolfenstein under GPL

Submitted by saulot
saulot writes: As told in ioquake3.org, Wolfenstein Enemy territory and Return to castle Wolfenstein joined the ranks of opensource during the last QuakeCon!

[url=http://ioquake3.org/2010/08/12/welcome-wolfenstein-enemy-territory-and-return-to-castle-wolfenstein/]source[/url]

Submission + - PS3 Hacked via USB PORT! (psjailbreak.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Quoting the website " PS Jailbreak is a USB plug and play solution that installs in seconds, keeping your valid warranty seal in tact.

Easy to use installer and GUI takes you step by step.

Compatible with all production models FAT and SLIM. Supports all regions: USA, JAP, PAL and KOREA

PS Jailbreak disables forced software updates and will never brick your console.

Supports all games (it does not allow backups of bluray movies , dvd movies , or past consoles games)

Backup games to your internal hard drive or external hard drive through USB, and boot directly off GUI. Eliminating the need for expensive blueray burners and costly blank media.

Play backups off your hard drives 2x as fast as off the blueray drive. This eliminates lags and glitches to provide you with smoother game play.

Open up your console to a new generation of homebrew applications. Load homebrew apps/games off any USB hard drive/flash drive.

Fully updatable with new features/updates by connecting PS Jailbreak to any computers USB port.
"

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