thebjorn - Slashdot User

Submission + - Samsung keylogger could be false (networkworld.com) 2

Submitted by mug funky on Sunday April 03, 2011 @11:19PM

mug funky writes: UPDATE 3/31/11: GFI Labs, the maker of VIPRE, has issued an explanation and apology for generating the false positives that led to these articles: "We apologize to the author Mohamed Hassan, to Samsung, as well as any users who may have been affected by this false positive."

looks like it wasn't just me who was surprised that of all the Samsung laptops in the world, only two have this issue and both were found by one guy (who was loath to divulge the AV tool he was using)

Submission + - Man steers R/C car with his hands using Kinect (indianjack.com)

Submitted by

hasanabbas1987

on Sunday April 03, 2011 @03:58PM

hasanabbas1987 writes: "With the right Arduino board, an R/C race car, a couple paperclips and the MacGyver spirit, we imagine most anyone can hack together a creative remote control these days... but how many can open-source an HTML5 web app that'll do the deed from any tablet, phone or PC? Gaurav Manek crafted just such a thing, and he'll demonstrate it for you on an Apple iPad in the video immediately above. What's more, he's also got a Kinect hack that uses Microsoft depth camera to control the very same with the wave of a well-placed hand. That said, you don't need to wait for an illustrious creator to have all the fun."

Submission + - Sugar Is Sugar TV ad (bloggernews.net) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03, 2011 @02:52PM

An anonymous reader writes: The industry sponsored Corn Refiners Association have started a series of of TV adverts to stem the growing movement away from HFCS (High Corn Fructose Syrup). This might be an uphill battle based on the mounting scientific evidence. Even Hunts, part of Conagra, have switched sides on HFCS. Clearly the CRA have an issue. The Youtube copy of the advert posted by the CRA has a 95% disapproval rating.

Submission + - PETA Quits GoDaddy after CEO Shoots Elephant 1

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Saturday April 02, 2011 @12:16AM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Bob Parsons, chief executive of the Internet domain-hosting company Go Daddy, has been roiled in controversy after he killed an elephant in Zimbabwe and posted a video of the hunt on his blog that justified the shooting because the meat fed villagers and helped farmers scare pachyderms away from crops. Now the LA Times reports that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has closed its account with Go Daddy and urged others to do the same. "Parsons is hiding behind the lame claim that killing elephants helps farmers in Africa whose crops are damaged by the animals," says PETA. "In fact, there are ample effective and nonlethal methods to deter elephants from crops, including using chili-infused string and beehives on poles to create low-cost 'fences." Meanwhile Parsons continued to defend his actions as good for local villagers. "These people have literally nothing and when an elephant is killed it's a big event for them, they are going to be able to eat some protein.""

Submission + - Facebook Develops HTML5 Gaming Benchmark (facebook.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 19, 2011 @02:21AM

An anonymous reader writes: A couple of Facebook engineers are developing an HTML5 gaming benchmark. They write, 'Two weeks ago Bruce and I released JSGameBench version 0.1. Today marks the release of version 0.2, a much faster and cleaner version. We continue to learn both from tightening the code and from the strong HTML5 community. Version 0.2 reinforces our belief in HTML5 as a strong, horizontal platform for games and highly interactive applications across the web.'

Comment Re:Why do these people keep pushing video?! (Score 1) 305

by thebjorn on Friday February 04, 2011 @04:35AM (#35101570) Attached to: Verizon To Throttle High-Bandwidth Users

[...] In the case of bandwidth marketing, it has always been a lie, since dial up modems, companies always selling far more than they can actually provide.

Living in the US, that's certainly true. It's not necessarily true in other parts of the world though. Where I'm at right now (http://goo.gl/PjjiL), I pay ~$120/month for 25Gbit up/down + a static IP address. I consistently get just over 3200 KB/sec, i.e. what I'm paying for plus a few extra bytes.

Comment Re:Quantity, not quality. (Score 1) 535

by thebjorn on Wednesday December 29, 2010 @05:37AM (#34696524) Attached to: Chinese Written Language To Dominate Internet

To the extent that you agree with established fact, your statements contribute nothing. To the extent that you disagree with established fact, your statements simply are wrong. When you feel an urge to broadcast your opinions to the world, reconsider.

Now that's quotable :-) ... yes, I know it doesn't hold in general, but how often does anyone talk to Mr. G. Galilei these days?

Comment Re:Could you please post your scores + H/W Specs? (Score 1) 163

by thebjorn on Saturday December 25, 2010 @12:21PM (#34665750) Attached to: A Real World HTML 5 Benchmark

Oddly both chrome and safari came up as "Safari version 534.10" in the benchmark.

Funnily, so did IE9 Beta (9.0.7930.16406). On my machine Chrome (same version as yours) got 13545 and IE9b got 13439.

Submission + - Patient Reportedly Cured of HIV by Stem Cells (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula on Wednesday December 15, 2010 @01:26PM

Zothecula writes: An HIV-infected man who received stem cell treatment for leukemia from a donor with natural resistance to HIV infection appears to have been cured of HIV, according to a report on the NAM aidsmap website. The treatment, which was carried out in 2007, opens the possibility of a cure for HIV infection through the use of genetically engineered stem cells.

Submission + - Solar hemisphere eruption shatters understandings (nasa.gov)

Submitted by dtjohnson on Wednesday December 15, 2010 @11:35AM

dtjohnson writes: "On August 1, 2010, an entire hemisphere of the sun erupted. Filaments of magnetism snapped and exploded, shock waves raced across the stellar surface, billion-ton clouds of hot gas billowed into space. Astronomers knew they had witnessed something big. It was so big, it may have shattered old ideas about solar activity."

Previously, solar scientists had considered solar activity to be localized and isolated but the August 1 eruption led to the insight that all localized activity (i.e. 'sunspots') were manifestations of much bigger interrelated solar magnetic activity lurking below the surface. This has implications for models of the Earth's climate which have modeled solar output as a relatively constant input to the Earth's climate varying only slightly on the 11-year sunspot cycle.

Submission + - Adobe forcing EULA on users (adobe.com) 2

Submitted by schizz69 on Friday December 10, 2010 @03:09AM

schizz69 writes: While installing the latest Adobe reader last night, I was following the normal steps when the ever present "accept this EULA" prompt came up.
Normally clicking and hoping I wasn't selling my soul to the devil, I thought that I would actually read the EULA. To my surprise, I found that
the EULA is in PDF format!!! now, how am I supposed to review and accept an EULA available only as the proprietry format provided by the
software I am trying to install??? I understand that there are alternatives out there, but what about your average Joe? how would he know to download another PDF reader or similar in order to review the EULA of Acrobat???
Another thought, IANAL but is it even legal to provide the EULA in such a format as you have to accept it prior to reading it?
Whats the communities view on this?

Submission + - SHA-3 Finalists Known

Submitted by Skuto on Friday December 10, 2010 @03:01AM

Skuto writes: NIST just announced the final selection of algorithms in the SHA-3 hash competition. The algorithms that are candidates to replace SHA-2 are BLAKE, Grøstl, JH, Keccak and Skein. The selection criteria included performance in software and hardware, hardware implementation size, best known attacks and being different enough from the other candidates. Curiously, some of the faster algorithms were eliminated as they were felt to be "too fast to be true". A full report with the (non-)selection rationale for each candidate is forthcoming.

Submission + - Xipwire Steps Up to Process Payments for Wikileaks (rawstory.com)

Submitted by Trip Ericson on Friday December 10, 2010 @02:41AM

Trip Ericson writes: After Mastercard, Visa, and Paypal all ceased handling donations to Wikileaks, mobile payment company Xipwire has stepped up in order to help out. Not only will Xipwire pass along donations, but it is waiving all fees normally associated with the service for any donations made to Wikileaks. From the article: "Our motivation is really simple," Xipwire founder Sharif Aleandre explained. "While people may or may not agree with WikiLeaks and the documents it has released, we feel that PayPal's recent decision to refuse to process donations on their behalf effectively silences voices in this democracy. In fact, it was the Citizens United case that basically equated donations with free speech and if the Supreme Court decided that our government doesn't have the power to regulate that speech then it's our opinion that corporations certainly shouldn't have that power either."

Comment Re:Who are you refering to exactly? (Score 1) 323

by thebjorn on Monday August 09, 2010 @06:10AM (#33186914) Attached to: 100-Sq.-Mile Ice Island Breaks Off Greenland Glacier

Having said that, there are some additional reasons why this happens with AGW. For example, science has pretty much come to a consensus a decade ago, so it's somewhat fair to assume that many of the people who hold out either suffer from cognitive dissonance (e.g. they drive an inefficient car and don't want to be feel bad for it, so they don't believe in AGW), or have monetary motives (e.g. they sell oil). Not all of them, obviously, but as a generalization, it doesn't seem overly unfair.

I don't own a gun. My driving is limited enough that I only need to fill my gas tank three times a year. While I am fiscally conservative, I'm nowhere near the right-wing. Socially, I'm far left on the political spectrum. I'm 40 y/o. I work as a glorified code-monkey (with a MS), and I've been to half a dozen countries in Asia, most of Western Europe, the USA, and Canada.

IOW, I'm neither gun-toting, a cognitive dissonance suffering SUV-driver, right-wing-nut, young/naive, un-educated, myopic, nor selling oil.

What scares me most about the AGW debate is the religious fervor, with which its proponents attack their opponents. You say that "science" has come to a consensus a decade ago, but that glosses over mountains of politicking. What it boils down to for me is this: when there is a conflict between policies aimed at reversing AGW and policies aimed at eliminating e.g. malaria and food shortages; which policy should be prioritized? The answer, at least for me, is that malaria is far more deserving of mind-share than AGW.

Submission + - Government settles antitrust suit against Intel (thehill.com)

Submitted by GovTechGuy on Wednesday August 04, 2010 @01:38PM

GovTechGuy writes: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced Wednesday that it has settled a December antitrust suit against chip giant Intel alleging the company used its domination of the chip market to coerce computer makers into scorning its rivals.

Intel will immediately be prohibited from a number of practices the FTC argues harm competitors in the CPU and graphics processor markets. Intel will not be fined under the terms of the settlement, which would put to rest an antitrust lawsuit filed by the FTC in December. Intel's alleged anti-competitive practices include refusing to sell chips to some buyers unless they stopped buying from competitors like Advanced Micro Devices; using predatory design that excludes smaller chip makers without benefiting performance, and blocking access to third-party foundries that manufacture chips on contract.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz expressed confidence that the government would have been successful had the litigation gone to court, but said any resolution would have taken a minimum of two to three years — a lifetime in the computer chip industry. He emphasized that the terms of the settlement would open the door to competition in the computer chip market immediately. Leibowitz said the Commission was "deeply troubled" by Intel's actions.

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