Comment Re:Credit Agencies (Score 1) 225
Here's how it is folks: take care of yourself and your family first, even if your credit score takes a hit. You can't eat your credit score.
Unlike your family, which is DEEE-LICIOUS.
An Early Look At Civilization V 286
c0mpliant writes "IGN and Gamespot have each released a preview of the recently announced and eagerly awaited Civilization V. Apart from the obvious new hexagon shape of tiles and improved graphics, the articles go on to outline some of the major changes in the game, such as updated AI, new 'flavors' to world leaders, and a potentially game-changing, one-unit-per-tile system. No more will the stack of doom come to your city's doorsteps. Some features which will not be returning are religion and espionage. The removal of these two have sparked a frenzy of discussion on fan-related forums."
Comment Re:Missing role: deleters (Score 4, Insightful) 160
Yes, this is really quite pathetic. On several occasions now I have wanted some information on a particular topic (e.g. a shitty old game I picked up, my mobile phone, or even a description of lemon party). I go to the wikipedia page, I can tell that several people went to the effort of writing an entry on that topic but the page was deleted by someone who decided that no-one would ever want to see that information. This is arrogance in the extreme - destroying some people's work because they incorrectly assumed that no-one would ever want to see it. Was the article getting in the way before it was deleted?!
Surely Wikipedia could have a link to view pages that were 'deleted' for non-notability - what would be so bad about that?
Submission + - Ubuntu dumps the brown, gets new visual identity (arstechnica.com) 4
buntcake writes: Canonical has launched a new visual identity for the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Ubuntu is shedding its previous brown look and adopting a more professional color scheme with purple and orange. The colors will be used in a new GNOME theme and boot splash for Ubuntu 10.04. According to updated design documents that were published in the Ubuntu wiki, "light" is the underlying concept behind the new visual identity. It displaces the "human" concept that has been part of Ubuntu's theming and brand vernacular for the past five years. Ubuntu community manager Jono Bacon has posted a screenshot and additional information.
Submission + - Paper "hacks into" Govt website by guessing URL (smh.com.au)
thelamecamel writes: "According to the NSW state government, the Sydney Morning Herald, a local newspaper, attacked the government's "website firewall security" for two days to research a recent story. The affected government minister said that the website was accessed 3727 times, and that "This is akin to 3,727 attempts to pick the lock of a secure office and take highly confidential documents..." and has referred the matter to police. But how did the paper "hack" the website? They entered the unannounced URL. Security by obscurity at its finest."
BlackBerry Outages Across North America 284
TheHappyMailAdmin writes "BlackBerry service in North America is out: no email, no BB Messenger and no web browsing. Last carrier estimate I got was 24 hours until service will be restored, with others saying they've gotten estimates from support from between 3 hours to 2 days. BES and BIS services are impacted, and it's across all carriers. Bad timing for RIM as people are wrapping up their holiday shopping..." Updated 18:11 GMT by timothy: Reader notheusualsuspect pings with a note that the service has been restored.
Submission + - Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear (vanityfair.com)
GilliamOS writes: Living in Iowa, escaping corn is no easy feat; Escaping Monsanto is even harder. Every farmer I know and have talked to say they cannot escape them, even if they give them no business. They are to farming what Microsoft is to computers, except they are allowed to kill, poison, and pollute on a scale that can make even the least of us concerned about the environment cringe. Allowed by the US Patent system, they have turned seed research that used to done by public universities into IP and patented technology, and they stop at nothing to protect their seeds. Saving seeds, a practice that allowed farmers to ensure they can plant crops in the next season, is no longer permitted. They are the inventors of Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) and Dioxin, two of the most toxic non-military chemicals known to man, yet they also control some 90% of our seed for crops.
Submission + - AU Government Will Introduce Mandatory Filtering (itnews.com.au) 2
bennyboy64 writes: iTnews reports that the Australian Government has announced its intention to introduce legislation that will make ISP-level filtering mandatory for all refused classification material hosted overseas. The Government intends to amend the Broadcasting Services Act in August 2010 to enforce the filter, and expects the filter to be operational within a further twelve months. 'The report into the pilot trial of ISP-level filtering demonstrates that blocking RC-rated material can be done with 100 percent accuracy and negligible impact on internet speed' Senator Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy said.
Anticipated Closure of BitTorrent Sites Spurs Panic Downloads In China 114
hackingbear writes "Beijing Internet users are scrabbling for downloads from BitTorrent websites following speculation that authorities will shut them down as early as this week. Internet experts told China Daily the failure might be caused by an overload of users seeking last-minute free downloads. As the largest BT download website in China with 5 million downloads each year, VeryCD has been on the verge of closure after the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) shut hundreds of similar peer-to-peer file sharing sites, including the 50 million-user BTChina, during the last 10 days in its latest attempt to fight pornography and piracy online."
Comment Re:rain (Score 1) 201
Actually it doesn't, which is the really cool thing about these cloaks. The cloaks are made of a metamaterial for which the refractive index is less than 1, so light travels faster than c in that medium. That's what makes them tricky (but not impossible) to build! The reduced refractive index with respect to the surrounds exactly makes up for the extra distance travelled. It's neat stuff.
Comment Re:rain (Score 4, Funny) 201
How would it show movement? AFAIK the cloak should be able to move around and this movement shouldn't be visible to you.
Or do you mean they won't be able to make a flexible cloaking ninja suit that keeps cloaking the ninja as they walk, despite the suit bending? The solution to that, of course, is to roll around inside a giant hamster ball/zorb cloaking device! Watch out... i'll sneak up on you and ROLL YOU TO DEATH.
Comment Re:rain (Score 1) 201
Yep, and even if you got a broadband cloak that worked at all those frequencies, you could still pick it up by a number of ways not mentioned in TFA. You could pick it up with sonar (I guess in principle it could also be an acoustic cloak to beat that too), but you could also change the refractive index of the room. The cloak is designed so that no matter what's in the cloaked region, it appears to have a refractive index of 1 (or whatever the cloak's surrounds are supposed to be). If you change the refractive index of the surrounds slightly (change temperature, spray an aerosol, fill the room with water (!)) then the cloak should be relatively easy to spot.
The other downside of these cloaks, of course, is that you can't see out of them since no light interacts with your eyes.
UN Officials Remove Poster Mentioning Chinese Firewall 409
At a UN-sponsored Internet Governance Forum in Egypt, anti-censorship group Open Net Initiative was startled by a demand from UN officials to remove a poster mentioning Chinese Net censorship. When ONI refused the request, security personnel arrived and took away the poster. The group was promoting a new book, Access Controlled, a survey of Internet censorship, filtering, and online surveillance. A witness said, "The poster was thrown on the floor and we were told to remove it because of the reference to China and Tibet. We refused, and security guards came and removed it. The incident was witnessed by many." Here is a video of the removal.
Comment Re:Robots.txt (Score 4, Interesting) 549
And murdoch's news.com.au's robots.txt file even directs bots to the sitemap!
User-agent: *
Disallow: /*comments/*
Disallow: /*print/*
Disallow: /*email/*
Disallow: /*SIT*
Disallow: /*.swf
Disallow: /printpage/
Disallow: */404*
Sitemap: http://www.news.com.au/sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow-sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail-sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph-sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun-sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.news.com.au/perthnow-sitemap.xml
User-agent: *
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow: */404*
Sitemap: http://www.news.com.au/sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow-sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail-sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph-sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun-sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.news.com.au/perthnow-sitemap.xml
UK's Channel 4 To Broadcast In 3D 126
fatnickc writes "The UK's Channel 4, from the 16th of September, will be broadcasting a few programmes in 3D, the full list of which can be found here. While the likes of a 3D Miley Cyrus concert aren't exactly groundbreaking, this will give 3D viewing at home much more publicity, paving the way for even more interesting projects in the future. In partnership with retailer Sainsbury's, Channel 4 are producing free 3D glasses so that as many people as possible can watch them, although it's unclear which of the various types they'll be. "
