Comment Theses articles have zero information content (Score 1) 551
The references articles seemed more like fud than any reason to get worried.
Comment If Apple tells me it's 4G, then it's 4G (Score 0) 137
Why would I care what the ITU thinks 4G is. 4G is whatever the market says it is and the ITU is spectacularly disconnected from the marker.
Dogs Can Be Pessimistic 99
Not that it will change anything, but researchers at Bristol University say that your dog might be a gloom-monger. In addition to the downer dogs, the study also found a few that seemed happy no matter how uncaring the world around them was. "We know that people's emotional states affect their judgments and that happy people are more likely to judge an ambiguous situation positively. What our study has shown is that this applies similarly to dogs," said professor Mike Mendl, an author of the study and head of animal welfare and behavior at Bristol University.
Comment Frustrated /. reader switches homepage to FOX (Score 4, Funny) 178
Ok, not really, even no news on slashdot is better than what they call news on some of those other sites. Seriously, credit to the Pia for making the point that saying nothing is better than just talking when you have nothing to say. Where was I again, yes, rambling on
Researchers Discover Irresistible Dance Moves 215
sciencehabit writes "To find out if certain dance moves are more attractive to women than others, researchers recruited a bunch of college guys and used motion-capture to create avatars of them dancing. When women watched the avatars (2 videos included in story), the men they found most attractive were those who kept their heads and torsos moving without flailing their arms and legs. The researchers say dancing is thus an honest signal to women of the man's strength and health, just as it is in crabs and hummingbirds, who also move in special ways to attract mates."
Medieval Copy Protection 226
An anonymous reader writes "In medieval times a 'book curse' was often included on the inside cover or on the last leaf of a manuscripts, warning away anyone who might do the book some harm. Here's a particularly pretty one from Yale's Beinecke MS 214: 'In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. In the one thousand two hundred twenty-ninth year from the incarnation of our Lord, Peter, of all monks the least significant, gave this book to the [Benedictine monastery of the] most blessed martyr, St. Quentin. If anyone should steal it, let him know that on the Day of Judgment the most sainted martyr himself will be the accuser against him before the face of our Lord Jesus Christ.'"
Comment Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these (Score 1) 217
On second thought, never mind.
Comment Please, don't inflict this on the kids anywhere (Score 2, Insightful) 148
I did the buy one, donate one to a 3rd world kid program with the first OLPC. I could not believe what a piece of crap the OLPC was when I got it. I could not even IM from it. I felt so bad that I had inflicted that on some poor child somewhere. If I could find the poor kid that ended up with the OLPC I paid for, I would happily send them a MacBook Air as a way of apologizing and showing that not all computers sucked.
Comment Re:Why a smartphone? Google voice + prepaid is bes (Score 1) 199
I've been trying this but the problem is I don't end up with a reasonable data plan on the prepaid phones which turns out to be a drag. Anyone have ideas for good prepaid plans with data in the Canada? What about US?
US Immigration Bill May Bring a National Biometric ID Card 619
schwit1 sends this quote from the Wall Street Journal:
"Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain. Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal US workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker. ... A person familiar with the legislative planning said the biometric data would likely be either fingerprints or a scan of the veins in the top of the hand. It would be required of all workers, including teenagers, but would be phased in, with current workers needing to obtain the card only when they next changed jobs, the person said. The card requirement also would be phased in among employers, beginning with industries that typically rely on illegal-immigrant labor."
"Tube Map" Created For the Milky Way 142
astroengine writes "Assuming you had an interstellar spaceship, how would you navigate around the galaxy? For starters, you'd probably need a map. But there's billions of stars out there — how complex would that map need to be? Actually, Samuel Arbesman, a research fellow from Harvard, has come up with a fun solution. He created the 'Milky Way Transit Authority (MWTA),' a simple transit system in the style of the iconic London Underground 'Tube Map.' (Travel Tip: Don't spend too much time loitering around the station at Carina, there's some demolition work underway.)"
Comment Love comcast is working with it's customers (Score 4, Interesting) 173
I'm impressed that Comcast is talking about it trials publicly and engaging customers. Many service providers run stuff in private, don't tell their guinea pigs, I mean customers that they experiment on, and then just select whatever seemed convent for the service provider. Engaging people in a trials like this, seems win/win for the customers and service providers.
Comment Good explanation of the bug by TLS spec author (Score 5, Informative) 97
A good source of info about what this attack is and how serious it is can be found at
http://www.educatedguesswork.org/2009/11/understanding_the_tls_renegoti.html
Comment Just replace the code (Score 1) 282
It seems to me that it would not be that hard to just replace the code that is a problem
Licensing Dispute Threatens Future of Skype 282
tomlins writes "eBay is faced with the prospect of having to close down the hugely popular VoIP app Skype due to its reliance on proprietary code still owned by Skype's original founders, who are threatening to pull the plug on the licensing agreement they have with eBay."
