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Comment Re:Exactly wrong (Score 1) 305

Just as soon as there is something similar in other countries, expect a LOT of people to get on twitter to organise dissent.

Not necessarily. Once a country gains the capacity not merely to block Twitter/Facebook/Whatever (that's too simple) but to trace the messages back to their sources - not necessarily on the day or in real time - then it's game over. If you know that the goons will come knocking at three in the morning, you'll be loathe to use the likes of TwitBook.

What's needed is a truly secure solution - because we know that the bad guys are likely to find needles in the haystack...

Comment Re:Quite impressive, but still fundamentally flawe (Score 1) 273

"Conclusion: Steve Jobs was right; flash doesn't belong on phones and I'm glad he is killing it, even if he is still an annoying control freak."

How about just make Flash work on phones - in the very, very near future, I will stop carrying a notebook or a netbook with me. Billions of others round the world will never buy a netbook - but they will buy a powerful phone. The argument for making any platform mobile is too strong.

Comment Return on investment? (Score 1) 2

You'll need an IP lawyer to tell you whether this approach is legal. And this might cost you more than whatever you might have to pay the original client in order to get a licence or share of the original IP. Seems a terrible waste of effort to reverse engineer and code from the ground up.

Unless of course the original client is Microsoft and the product is Vista. In which case, off you go.....

Government

Secret Service Runs At "Six Sixes" Availability 248

PCM2 writes "ABC News is reporting that the US Secret Service is in dire need of server upgrades. 'Currently, 42 mission-oriented applications run on a 1980s IBM mainframe with a 68 percent performance reliability rating,' says one leaked memo. That finding was the result of an NSA study commissioned by the Secret Service to evaluate the severity of their computer problems. Curiously, upgrades to the Service's computers are being championed by Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who says he's had 'concern for a while' about the issue."
Science

Why Time Flies By As You Get Older 252

Ant notes a piece up on WBUR Boston addressing theories to explain the universal human experience that time seems to pass faster as you get older. Here's the 9-minute audio (MP3). Several explanations are tried out: that brains lay down more information for novel experiences; that the "clock" for nerve impulses in aging brains runs slower; and that each interval of time represents a diminishing fraction of life as we age.

Comment Disoriented? Who wouldn't be... (Score 1) 237

"The researchers first levitated a young mouse, just three-week-old and weighing 10 grams. It appeared agitated and disoriented, seemingly trying to hold on to something. 'It actually kicked around and started to spin, and without friction, it could spin faster and faster, and we think that made it even more disoriented,' said researcher Yuanming Liu, a physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. They decided to mildly sedate the next mouse they levitated, which seemed content with floating. "

I'm generally disoriented when spinning without friction. And generally content once mildly sedated.

Google

Confirmed Gmail / Google App Outage 189

mbone writes "Earlier today there was a confirmed Google outage which got a lot of attention from network operators. From a post to NANOG after everything calmed down: 'Google ack'd a maintenance on their core network did not go as planned-Forced traffic to one peer link that was unable to handle all the traffic. Maintenance has been rolled back. Issue has been restored.' This is exactly what makes me nervous about cloud computing and data storage. It's bad enough when I screw up a config and it takes down my mail, but what about when it happens to the entire globe at once?" Several readers also point to CNET's coverage of the outage. Update: 05/14 19:25 GMT by T : CWmike adds this: "Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes that what may be happening is a massive DDoS attack. Based on the size of the attack that would be needed to interfere with Google, I believe that it's quite likely to be the result of an attack from the controllers of the Windows worm, Conficker. Another theory that has been put about — that the problem was due to AT&T NOC routing problems — does not appear to hold water, writes Steven." Update: 05/14 21:01 GMT by T : Google's put up a low-detail explanation on their blog that says "An error in one of our systems caused us to direct some of our web traffic through Asia, which created a traffic jam. As a result, about 14% of our users experienced slow services or even interruptions."
Image

Collective Intelligence in Action 53

lamaditx writes "The book Collective Intelligence in Action shows you how to apply theory from Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Data Mining to your business. The goal is to create systems which make use of data created by groups of people — i.e. social networks — and abstract from these to gain new or additional information. Some of you might think "just another kind of Web 2.0." This is one application you might think of, but the input and output format do not matter that much. You can use these methods anywhere as long as the amount of data is big enough. You will find some examples related to the latest web technologies to explain methods, but the code is rather generic. Also, you won't find a lot disturbing details about HTML, HTTP and the like." Keep reading for the rest of Adrian's review.
Windows

Submission + - Windows XP driver support begins to end (blorge.com) 3

thefickler writes: "It's official, manufacturers are starting to dump Windows XP support entirely and some new models won't even have Windows XP drivers or any kind of support available, anywhere. One reader, "Mark" contacted TECH.BLORGE regarding installing Windows XP on his HP V6610 (Australian) laptop which is the V6620 in the US. "Mark" said when he went to the HP driver/downloads section that very few Windows XP drivers were available for it and he was right, there were almost no useful drivers for the laptop there. His call to HP support didn't get very far as "HP is no longer supporting Windows XP on the newer PCs.""

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