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Comment Just people using same passwords (Score 1) 203

I'd guess it's just hacks of other sites, filter it on just gmail accounts and hope they used the same password for both

Really just people trying to ride the coat tails of the fappening. Ermagurd, mad hax!

My email is on the list (afforess@gmail.com, go check!) I use a password for gmail I have never used for any other site. So I don't see how this can be the case. I have 2FA on the account, so not too worried, but still!

Comment Re:Points on your license? (Score 3, Interesting) 151

Lol what? I visited San Francisco over Christmas and rented a home inside the city center, the bus system was great! The waits at any station was never > 7 minutes, and usually 2-3 minutes. Almost everyone there used the bus systems, and you can also use BART to get outside of the Bay area if you need to. I wish the public transportation in my area (Grand Rapids Michigan) was half as good as San Francisco.

I think commentators should stick to topics they are familiar with instead of making wild, false claims.

Comment Re:Models are always right! (Score 4, Interesting) 760

The models are off because up until 2009/2010-ish were actually experiencing a natural cooling trend, which masked our artificial warming trend and came out as a wash. Now that the cooling trend has subsided, warming is expected to spike in the coming decade.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/03/AR2009090302199.html

Or we could just jump to convenient conclusions given a tiny dataset.
Space

Submission + - Stars Found to Produce Complex Organic Compounds (space.com)

InfiniteZero writes: Researchers at the University of Hong Kong observed stars at different evolutionary phases and found that they are able to produce complex organic compounds and eject them into space, filling the regions between stars. The compounds are so complex that their chemical structures resemble the makeup of coal and petroleum, the study's lead author Sun Kwok, of the University of Hong Kong, said.

Comment Re:Kill it Oracle (Score 2) 338

If you follow it to it's logical conclusion, the best programmer's flip the machine bits by hand...

Correct: the best programmers can use machine code if needed. But the best programmers also don't abuse the apostrophe as much as you did...

If I found out someone was manipulating code at the machine level - I'd definitely have issues with that. You lose portability and expose yourself to a nearly infinite amount of issues - there really aren't many cases left where this would even be remotely advisable.

PS. Nitpicking grammar - that's nearly as bad as using machine code directly. :p

Comment Re:Easy reason (Score 5, Insightful) 533

This may be an unpopular theory, but I think Wikipedia's shrinking community has little to do with the admins behavior. I've only personally heard about their poor behavior from 3rd, 4th, or 5th hand accounts. But that's purely anecdotal and a side-tangent.

I think the reason the community is shrinking is because Wikipedia, at least the English version, is complete. I'm not implying that there isn't more information that can be added, but as far as the sum of human knowledge goes, I'd guess that they have gotten past that "magic" 95% marker for easily acquired knowledge. Most of the remaining work to be done is article maintenance, and filling in mundane details of niche articles or emerging fields. The days when 5th graders wrote articles on your home town or park near you is gone. My quaint home town article for Rockford, MI (a town with less than 5000 people) is nearly 3 pages long! (I can't believe there was enough to even fill in 1 page, after the generic census data...),

This isn't a bad thing. It's the natural evolution of such a site. Wales should pat himself on the back and congratulate the community for his contribution to society as a whole. Wikipedia is a job well done and has moved our world forward in a positive direction, in what is becoming a rarer achievement every day.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft's Web map exposes phone, PC locations (cnet.com)

suraj.sun writes: Microsoft has collected the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones, and other Wi-Fi devices around the world and makes them available on the Web without taking the privacy precautions that competitors have, CNET has learned.

The vast database available through Live.com publishes the precise geographical location, which can point to a street address and sometimes even a corner of a building, of Android phones, Apple devices, and other Wi-Fi enabled gadgets.

Unlike Google and Skyhook Wireless, which have compiled similar lists of these unique Wi-Fi addresses, Microsoft has not taken any measures to curb access to its database.

CNET News: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20085028-281/microsofts-web-map-exposes-phone-pc-locations/?tag=topStories2

The Internet

Submission + - Tens of thousands flee from BT and Virgin (itpro.co.uk)

twoheadedboy writes: "The two biggest ISPs in the UK are losing thousands of customers. Earlier this week Virgin reported it had lost 36,000 cable broadband customers. BT, meanwhile, has seen around 125,000 active consumer line customers flee this quarter. With that many customers leaving, where are they going?"

Submission + - House Panel Approves Bill Forcing ISPs Log Users (cnet.com) 2

skids writes: Under the guise of fighting child pornography, the House Judiciary Committee approved legislation on Thursday that would require Internet service providers (ISPs) to collect and retain records about Internet users’ activity. The 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall's elections. A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers' names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses. Per dissenting Rep. John Conyers (D-MI): 'The bill is mislabeled ... This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It's creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes.'

Submission + - NASA's Hubble Discovers Another Moon Around Pluto (nasa.gov)

thebchuckster writes: Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope discovered a fourth moon orbiting the icy dwarf planet Pluto. The tiny, new satellite – temporarily designated P4 — was uncovered in a Hubble survey searching for rings around the dwarf planet.

The new moon is the smallest discovered around Pluto. It has an estimated diameter of 8 to 21 miles (13 to 34 km). By comparison, Charon, Pluto's largest moon, is 648 miles (1,043 km) across, and the other moons, Nix and Hydra, are in the range of 20 to 70 miles in diameter (32 to 113 km).

Piracy

Submission + - Movie ind bins report: pirates are great consumers (geek.com) 1

An anonymous reader writes: The movie and music industry seem hell bent on portraying pirates as criminals and parasites who cost both industries billions of dollars in lost sales. In order to prove this fact a number of studies are commissioned to help demonstrate the effect a pirate has on sales of entertainment.

The problem with this approach is that it has been found to be biased towards portraying pirates as the movie industry wants them to be seen, rather than presenting the facts. A great example of this has been discovered by the German-language politics and media website Telepolis.

GfK Group is one of the largest market research companies in the world and is often used by the movie industry to carry out research and studies into piracy. Talking to a source within GfK who wished to remain anonymous, Telepolis found that a recent study looking at pirates and their purchasing activities found them to be almost the complete opposite of the criminal parasites the entertainment industry want them to be.

The study states that it is much more typical for a pirate to download an illegal copy of a movie to try it before purchasing. They are also found to purchase more DVDs than the average consumer, and they visit the movie theater more, especially for opening weekend releases which typically cost more to attend.

The conclusion of the study is that movie pirates are generally more interested in film and therefore spend more money and invest more time in it. In other words, they make up some of the movie industries best customers.

Unfortunately, we will never get to read the official version of the study as the unnamed client who paid for it to be created has decided it should not see a release. The reason given for shelving it was that the contents proved “unpleasant.”

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