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Comment Re:Seriously (Score 1) 422

As for the idea of contaminating something like Mars and having it end up overrun with earth bacteria, I guess it's impossible to prove that it couldn't happen, but I don't it's very likely. Mars is more like the earth than anywhere else in the solar system, but it's still very different. You might be able to find a few organisms here that could potentially survive on Mars, but it's doubtful that any would thrive, particularly to the point of overrunning the planet.

I hope you don't have to eat those words when our giant bat overlords come back down in 30 years.

The Internet

Norwegian Websites Declare War On IE 6 349

Eyvind A. Larre writes "A large and rapidly growing campaign to get users to stop using IE6 is being implemented throughout Europe. 'Leading the charge is Finn.no, an eBay-like site that is apparently the largest site for buying and selling goods in all of Norway (Finn is Norwegian for "Find"). Earlier this week, Finn.no posted a warning on its web page for visitors running IE 6. The banner, seen at right, urges them to ditch IE 6 and upgrade to Internet Explorer 7.' The campaign is now spreading like fire on Twitter (#IE6), and starting to become an amazing effort by big media companies to get rid of IE6! The campaign also hit Wired some hours ago."

Comment Re:No Ads (Score 3, Insightful) 375

Boxee plays the ads. Boxee goes directly to Hulu to get the content whereas I think XBMC is served from your computer which goes to Hulu. Not to familiar with XBMC myself though. Regardless the worst part is is that on my computer I have an ad blocker. On Boxee I do not. I saw more ads on Boxee than I ever saw on my computer. Even if I disabled ad blocking on my computer I was more prone to "do something else" for those 15-30 seconds. At the TV, not so much.

Comment Re:Another Bomb Here to Stay (Score 2, Interesting) 414

I use a Mac at home and one day finally remembered that Amazon had a service. So I decided to go their first as I knew they were cheaper. I went to go fill up my cart with some albums but as far as I could tell you could only buy one album per purchase. Even worse if I went to buy singles I had to make a new transaction per song. Has the service improved since then? After I bought one single I went back to my DRM laden and slightly more expensive iTunes store. Although maybe there is an easier way to do it on a Windows machine. I'm actually just curious, not trying to be secretly inflammatory.

Comment Re:No more DRM on music, but... (Score 1) 1079

MacrumorsLive didn't crash. They took the site offline along with Macrumors.com to assess what happened instead of trying to fight 4Chan. Once they determined only MacrumorsLive was cracked they kept it offline (no chance of fixing the security issue in that time frame) and brought Macrumors.com back up as the servers are separate entities. Macrumors.com was only brought down just to be safe.
Education

Best Paradigm For a First Programming Course? 592

Keyper7 writes "The first programming course I had during my computer science schooling, aptly named 'Introduction to Programming,' was given in C because its emphasis was on imperative programming. A little before I graduated, though, it was decided that the focus would change to object-oriented programming with Java. (I must emphasize that the change was not made because of any hype about Java or to dumb down the course; back then and still, it's presented by good Java programmers who try to teach good practices and do not encourage excessive reliance on libraries.) But the practices taught are not paradigm-independent, and this sparked a discussion that continues to this day: which paradigm is most appropriate to introduce programming? Besides imperative and object-oriented, I know teachers who firmly believe that functional programming is the best choice. I'm interested in language-independent opinions that Slashdotters might have on this matter. Which paradigm is good to introduce programming while keeping a freshman's mind free enough for him/her to learn other paradigms afterwards?"
Security

Undocumented Bypass in PGP Whole Disk Encryption 316

A non-mouse Coward writes "PGP Corporation's widely adopted Whole Disk Encryption product apparently has an encryption bypass feature that allows an encrypted drive to be accessed without the boot-up passphrase challenge dialog, leaving data in a vulnerable state if the drive is stolen when the bypass feature is enabled. The feature is also apparently not in the documentation that ships with the PGP product, nor the publicly available documentation on their website, but only mentioned briefly in the customer knowledge base. Jon Callas, CTO and CSO of PGP Corp., responded that this feature was required by unnamed customers and that competing products have similar functionality."
Security

Verizon vs. the Needham Fire Department 195

netbuzz writes "At issue is whether — or not — there was a minor fire in a house on Pine Grove Street in Needham, Mass., caused by a Verizon employee drilling through an electrical main. Everyone agrees that whatever happened — or didn't happen — was indeed the fault of the Verizon employee; it's "fire or no fire" that is at issue. Verizon says no fire, not even smoke. The Needham Fire Department begs to differ. New eye-witness reports are emerging ... and it's not looking good for Verizon."
Biotech

Walking Molecule Now Carries Packages 108

Roland Piquepaille writes "Chemists from the University of California at Riverside designed two years ago a molecule which could move straight on a flat surface — a nano-walker if you wish. Now, they've found a way to force this walking molecule to carry packages. The nano-worker can now carry two CO2 molecules. And like yourself when you carry two heavy bags, this nano-worker is slower when it carries other molecules. The researchers think their discovery will lead to reliable ways of carrying molecules, an equivalent of the conveyor belts in today's factories."

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Prof: So the American government went to IBM to come up with a data encryption standard and they came up with ... Student: EBCDIC!"

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