Comment Re:Is this a joke? (Score 1) 274
Colossus hums: "WX7KF9L CBL3 GZDQDD"
WOPR asks: "Shall we play a game?"
Sky-Net retorts: "Global Thermonuclear War"
Well, *they* thought it was funny.
Richard Stallman: Cell Phones Are 'Stalin's Dream' 792
jbrodkin writes "Cell phones are 'Stalin's dream,' says free software pioneer Richard Stallman, who refuses to own one. 'Cell phones are tools of Big Brother. I'm not going to carry a tracking device that records where I go all the time, and I'm not going to carry a surveillance device that can be turned on to eavesdrop.' Even the open source Android is dangerous because devices ship with proprietary executables, Stallman says in a wide-ranging interview on the state of the free software movement. Despite some progress, Stallman is still dismayed by 'The existence and use of non-free software [which] is a social problem. It's an evil. And our aim is a world without that problem.'"
Comment Re:That's what's so facepalm-inducing about it all (Score 1) 464
I agree (I think) with the releases by wikileaks, but as I see it the major difference is that the New York Times is a paper of record, and Ellsberg is a US citizen. Frankly I think it just terrifies every government on the planet that a foreign national could choose to publish anything they receive with no real recourse.
In the end I do believe wikileaks is in the right, but I can understand why the US is so keen to make it as painful as possible.
Comment Re:Amazing news (Score 0) 286
Even Earth girls aren't *that* easy.
Comment estimates vs. observations (Score 1) 186
It seems to me that this discovery yielded a change in the calculated number of stars in the universe, while doing next to nothing about "the total number of known stars in the universe".
Comment Re:This just in (Score 1) 429
In that case give that dude a cookie and make Apple hire him. It's nothing short of magical that he could push a 10Gbps DDoS from a single 386 and a VB script, I don't care what his mitichlorian count is.
The Story of My As-Yet-Unverified Impact Crater 250
tetrahedrassface writes "When I was very young, my dad took me on a trip to his parents' farm. He wanted to show me 'The Crater.' We walked a long way through second generation hardwoods and finally stood on the rim of a hole that has no equal in this area. As I grew up, I became more interested in The Crater, and would always tell friends about it. It is roughly 1,200 feet across and 120 feet deep, and has a strange vibe about it. When you walk up to it, you feel like something really big happened here. Either the mother of all caves is down there, or a large object smashed into this place a long, long time ago. I bought aerial photos when I was twelve and later sent images from GIS to a geologist at a local university. He pretty much laughed me out of his office, saying that it was a sinkhole. He did wish me luck, however. It may be sinkhole. Who knows? Last week I borrowed a metal detector and went poking around, and have found the strangest shrapnel pieces I have ever seen. They are composed of a metal that reacts strongly to acids. The largest piece so far reacted with tap water and dish-washing detergent. My second trip today yielded lots of strange new pieces of metal, and hopefully, one day the truth will be known. Backyard science is so much fun. And who knows; if it is indeed a cave, maybe Cerberus resides there."
Bees Beat Machines At 'Traveling Salesman' Problem 394
eldavojohn writes "Recent research on bumble bees has proven that the tiny bee is better than computers at the traveling salesman problem. As bees visit flowers to collect nectar and pollen they discover other flowers en route in the wrong order. But they still manage to quickly learn and fly the optimally shortest path between flowers. Such a problem is NP-Hard and keeps our best machines thinking for days searching for a solution but researchers are quite interested how such a tiny insect can figure it out on the fly — especially given how important this problem is to networks and transportation. A testament to the power of even the smallest batch of neurons or simply evidence our algorithms need work?"
Comment Re:Lucky (Score 1) 486
a car engine will easily overpower its breaks
I believe if you really look into it you will find that cars are designed so that (if properly cared for) the stock brakes can overcome the maximum output of the stock engine. This is a fundamental safety feature, which, if ignored, would certainly earn a offending car company a legal black eye. Feel free to give it a try on your way home today, but, if you do, your brakes will no longer be "properly cared for". You will stop though.
Comment What a let down (Score 1) 87
I seriously thought this was about a 3D printer that could print the blocks, but instead I'm presented with a pretty unimpressive assembly machine.
1. Build Lego assembly machine
2. ???
3. Profit!
Call me when you've got something to custom fabricate Lego blocks.
1. Build Lego block printer
2. Sell one to every Lego store on the planet
3. Profit!
Desktop Linux Is Dead 1348
digitaldc writes with this quote from PCWorld:
"It kills me to say this: The dream of Linux as a major desktop OS is now pretty much dead. Despite phenomenal security and stability — and amazing strides in usability, performance, and compatibility — Linux simply isn't catching on with desktop users. And if there ever was a chance for desktop Linux to succeed, that ship has long since sunk. ... Ultimately, Linux is doomed on the desktop because of a critical lack of content. And that lack of content owes its existence to two key factors: the fragmentation of the Linux platform, and the fierce ideology of the open-source community at large."
Word Processors — One Writer's Further Retreat 391
ch-dickinson writes "In 2003, I posted an essay ('Word Processors: One Writer's Retreat') here about my writing experience — professional and personal — that led to a novel draft in vi(m), and I outlined reasons I chose a simple non-WYSIWYG text editor rather than a more full-featured word processor. A few novels later, in 2010 now, I decided to try a text editor that predates even vi: ed. I'd run across ed about 20 years ago, working at a software company and vaguely recalled navigation of a text file meant mentally mapping such commands as +3 and -2: ed didn't click with me then. But writing a novel draft is mule work, one sentence after another, straight ahead — no navigating the text file. The writer must get the story down and my goal is 1,000 words a day, every day, until I'm done. I have an hour to 90 minutes for this. So when I returned after two decades, I was impressed with how efficiently ed generates plain text files."
Read on for the author's brief account of why he looked a few decades back in the software universe to find the right tool for the job.
Comment Re:Do not want (Score 1) 218
I didn't realize scrip/acting and 3D were mutually exclusive.. does the same apply to CGI, HD video at home, surround sound and color, too?
What 'Citizen Kane' really needed was some CGI. Then Welles could have made the movie he was really dreaming of, where Rosebud was shark with a frickin' laser on its head! What a let down.
Comment Licensed vs. Stolen (Score 1) 758
There's a much more accurate parallel here than licensed software. Open up any paperback book to the publication page. On it you'll find text similar to this (found in my copy of "The Pelican Brief"):
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen properly. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book"
The guys at AutoDesk said "you don't need to ship that back to us, just destroy it" regarding the old versions R14. They did this to save money and allow cheaper upgrade pricing. After shaking hands on that deal those R14 disks, if sold, seem to me more analogous to stolen property than previously licensed editions.
Comment Re:Yay! (Score 1) 758
The only good news is that it is much harder to enforce a license when buying an actual good, because people aren't used to having to sign a document when buying a stove or a TV.
I sign my name on an agreement every time I use my credit card for anything of substance. From last weeks Pizza Receipt:
"I agree to pay the above total amount according to card issuer agreement."
I figure it will take about 10 seconds for someone at VISA to realize that they can charge the Merchant a little bit more to have that signature cover a licensing agreement.
