Did you look at the screen shot in the article? It actually doesn't look half bad.

Seriously. It will save the costs of powering them. Our networking research lab is in desperate need of modern machines -- it's hard to get funding these days to update our equipment. The other groups in our CS department could really make use of it as well... I could even arrange pickup/delivery (we're on the US east coast). Contact me if you're interested.

Was it a microUSB port you saw? That is what my LG phone has for connecting to my computer and charging. It's definitely not non-standard, although it was the first device I got that used the micro.

To be fair some are harder to see than others; I had to try a couple times for this one. I was showing the circle and dot one to a friend and I had to coach him through part of it; he saw it eventually but I don't think he got how intently he needed to stare at the red dot. I don't doubt some illusions don't affect some people though.

Anyway, my contribution to this thread: http://allpsych.com/opticalillusions/images/jesus.jpg

Stare at that for thirty seconds or so then look at a blank wall and blink a couple times.

Because some mods obviously didn't get it that was an April Fools Joke from 2007.

I'm not sure if that was directed at me but I definitely agree with you that 1549 was a freak accident. Nothing you can do about something like what happened there besides make sure your pilots are trained to perform as admirably as the captain did in this instance.

I read recently an article about how they actually use falcons at JFK to prevent bird strikes.

This seems to be about that, though I'm not sure if it was the article I saw: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/02/01/2009-02-01_untitled__falcon01m.html

Even though /. was down, I still managed to not get any work done. Maybe it had something to do with the fact I kept rechecking to see if it were back up. Or maybe I should just stop blaming my laziness on external factors and just admit it is a personal problem: I would still find ways to not do work even without Slashdot! :P

Out of curiosity has anyone ever actually seen a "Starter" version of Windows in use? I don't think I ever have. I wonder what portion of users actually use that version. That's not, of course, any justification -- I still think this is a really shitty move.

From my perusal of TFA, I think the passwords were actually hashed in the DB, but the guy who cracked the site broke them: http://hackedphpbb.blogspot.com/

The response from phpBB.com seemed to indicate that the only passwords that were cracked were from those accounts that had been created in an older system, and had not logged in under the newer system. Given the large number of spam accounts on that site, I wonder if the majority of those cracked, not recently logged in accounts were spam accounts, and as such if the passwords are not representative of the userbase at large: http://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=29973

As someone who has never played EVE before, I found this recording that explains what happened to be interesting. http://go-dl.eve-files.com/media/0902/mittani.mp3 (fyi: mildly nsfw)

My first instinct is to laugh at all this, but it is amazing how seriously so many people take this. The internet never ceases to amaze me.

A link to the company's study: http://www.fortify.com/servlet/download/user/OpenSource_Security_WP_V5.pdf

While they raise a couple interesting points, my first impression is that they broadly generalize from a small sample set. Specifically, they only look at about 10 Java projects (including Tomcat, Hibernate, and JBoss), and proceed to conclude that the open source community is unresponsive to security threats. Conspicuously absent are any Linux distributions (let alone any *BSD... they have obviously never heard of OpenBSD), OpenOffice, or any tools likely to make it into desktop use for the UK government.

Oh, and the solution to all this apparently is to rely on their company's security auditing services to make sure that your company doesn't have "hidden security holes".... Riiiight....

Is there a problem with Microsoft using BSD code in their proprietary products? The developers clearly understood that was a potential outcome when they placed their code under a BSD license. As a result, they probably don't mind

That said, would it be nice to have seen MS contribute some code back? Yes, but that was not required by the license so there is no problem. That is the whole point of the BSD-style licenses: you can take my code and do whatever you want with it; you are under no further obligation to me.

The Economist this week has an interesting article on subsidized broadband and its economic impact:

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13024563

I do not necessarily agree or disagree with the opinions presented within the article; I just think it is an interesting and timely take on the topic.

Try https://www.forge.mil/ . Once you get past the invalid certificate (allegedly because the DoD CA isn't included with most browsers) you'll get an SSL error.