Comment Re:As a former Oracle dev (Score 3, Insightful) 367
If that's the way they work, they should not be selling mission-critical software that is exposed to the internet.
Comment Re:Not sure I would categorize this as a "Failure" (Score 4, Funny) 237
Well I'm not sure, but my guess is that several of the test objectives did not get checked off.
Comment "Fans need to chill" (Score 1) 481
> Responding to criticism, Bay thoughtfully explained that fans need to "chill."
Fans need to ignore Michael Bay and his movies entirely. I've never seen one of Bay's movies, he has never "ruined" anything for me, and I am perfectly content.
Comment It's the same as email (Score 1) 364
I wouldn't join with the same profile that I used personally.
Exactly. My work email address is different from my personal one, and likewise for social networks. The profile set up by my employer is used for work purposes only - it's got nothing to do with my personal life.
Comment Heuristic Algorithm (Score 1) 514
Examination of the example in the article suggests a heuristic algorithm that should provide near-optimal solutions and is suitable for real-time execution on neural wetware.
1. Start by mowing around the outside border.
2. Proceed going around, from the outside in.
3. When you reach a strip <= 3 mowers wide, clear it with short back-and-forths.
Proof of an upper bound on excess mowing vis-a-vis the optimal solution is left as an exercise for the reader.
Comment No, Poland (Score 2) 37
If I click "Random Article" a few times, it'll soon come up with a village in Poland - a lot more often than France.
Comment Now he's in trouble (Score 2, Funny) 148
TI's lawyers will be after him for DMCA violation because he's bypassed their physical copyright protection mechanism.
Comment Re:How Does It Encapsulate the Source Code? (Score 5, Funny) 220
RTFA
But it's all the way in Australia!
Comment Re:Sense of entitlement much? (Score 3, Insightful) 289
Facebook has repeatedly changed their policies to publish various data that they had said was private or friends-only. But hey, no problem, they didn't charge money when they screwed people over so it's OK!
Uh, no, it's not OK.
Comment Now they'll have to ban the state animal (Score 1) 256
Grizzly bears kill people, too.
Comment Not "any" threats (Score 2, Funny) 54
The article says Pan-STARRS can "identify any potential threats to Earth", but it can only find asteroids and comets that are about to hit us. They don't claim to be able to spot other threats, such as:
- Dalek invasion fleet
- Berserker machines
- Chain reaction of supernovae
- Radiation front from the collapse of the galactic core
- Borg attack from the future
- Galaxy-wide iPhone recall
Stupid gadget blogs, over-hyping stuff as usual.
Comment How many explanations does this make? (Score 1) 542
How many different explanations have we heard for colony collapse disorder so far? Five? Six? Is there any particular reason I should believe this one more than the others?
USAF's Robotic X-37B Orbiter Launched For Test Flight 145
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt: "The United States Air Force's novel robotic X-37B space plane is tucked inside the bulbous nose cone of an unmanned rocket that blasted off Thursday from Florida on a mission shrouded in secrecy. ... The unmanned military Orbital Test Vehicle 1 (OTV-1) — also known as the X-37B — lifted off at 7:52 pm EDT atop an Atlas 5 rocket on a mission that is expected to take months testing new spacecraft technologies. ... Key objectives of the space plane's first flight include demonstration and validation of guidance, navigation, and control systems – including a 'do-it-itself' autonomous re-entry and landing at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base with neighboring Edwards Air Force Base as a backup."
Graph-View of Collaborative Development At GitHub 14
VindictivePantz writes "In an interesting graphical view on collaborative development, FlowingData writes: 'GitHub is a large community where coders can collaborate on software development projects. People check code in and out, make edits, etc. Franck Cuny maps this community (with Gephi), based on information in thousands of user profiles.'"
Comment Not "Newly-Found" (Score 4, Insightful) 393
Microsoft was informed about this vulnerability on 12-Jun-2009, and they confirmed receipt of my report on 22-Jun-2009. Regrettably, no official patch is currently available. As an effective and easy to deploy workaround is available, I have concluded that it is in the best interest of users to go ahead with the publication of this document without an official patch.
from Tavis Ormandy's disclosure
So the bug was found six months ago, but Microsoft only decided it was serious enough to fix after it was publicized. Seems like another case of "responsible disclosure" being used to cover up a vulnerability, instead of fixing it (or publishing a workaround) before the bad guys find out about it.
