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Comment Netflix Sucks Because The Content Owners Suck (Score 0) 272

That's too bad for me, as I just cancelled my subscription last night. Having rented Inception on DVD, the wife and I sat down for our Friday Pizza-and-a-Movie ritual. As is common, the actual movie was prefaced by previews...plus advertisings for movie-related computer games...plus other horn-blowing movie preservation spew. I lost count after six, but what really blew my fuse was that NONE of these adverts could be skipped, NOR could I access the Top or Main navigational menus. By the time the movie could finally be started, I had finishing my meal which was thoroughly poisoned by the force-feeding of Warner Brothers (a subsidiary of Time Warner) promotional material. When I pay (or rent) content, I expect quick gratification...especially when the technology was designed for such. Quick Movie Review of Inception: The beginning made no sense for nearly 30 minutes, with too little information being revealed about the plot. The characters were shallow. Leonardo's performance was forced and fell flat. The SFX were good, but overplayed. Overall, I felt that this movie was an exercise in recycling The Matrix(es) mind-fsck and bullet-time memes. The musical score had its moments...and moments...and way too many moments, to the point of being so overbearing as to detract from the scenes being presented. I feel generous in giving it one Star. I will be making a conscious effort to avoid Warner Brothers (a subsidiary of Time Warner lest you forget) content. Sorry Netflix, you lost a customer too.
Government

Secret Service Runs At "Six Sixes" Availability 248

PCM2 writes "ABC News is reporting that the US Secret Service is in dire need of server upgrades. 'Currently, 42 mission-oriented applications run on a 1980s IBM mainframe with a 68 percent performance reliability rating,' says one leaked memo. That finding was the result of an NSA study commissioned by the Secret Service to evaluate the severity of their computer problems. Curiously, upgrades to the Service's computers are being championed by Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who says he's had 'concern for a while' about the issue."
Image

NASA Tests Flying Airbag 118

coondoggie writes "NASA is looking to reduce the deadly impact of helicopter crashes on their pilots and passengers with what the agency calls a high-tech honeycomb airbag known as a deployable energy absorber. So in order to test out its technology NASA dropped a small helicopter from a height of 35 feet to see whether its deployable energy absorber, made up of an expandable honeycomb cushion, could handle the stress. The test crash hit the ground at about 54MPH at a 33 degree angle, what NASA called a relatively severe helicopter crash."
Networking

Breaking Down the Demigod Launch 70

In addition to the piracy troubles that plagued Demigod's launch (and partly exacerbated by them), Stardock and Gas Powered Games ran into severe networking issues that hampered their ability to accommodate players with a legitimately purchased copy of the game. Brad Wardell has now posted a frank, detailed explanation of what happened and how they dealt with it. Quoting: "Demigod's connectivity problems have basically boiled down to 1 bad design decision and 1 architectural limitation. The bad design decision was made in December of 2008 when it was decided to have the network library hand off sockets to Demigod proper. In most games, the connection between players is handled purely by one source. ... So in Demigod, on launch day, Alice would host a game. Tom would be connected to Alice by the network library and then that socket would be handed to Demigod. Then, Alice and Tom would open a new socket to listen for more players to join in. As a result, a user might end up using a half dozen ports and sockets which some routers didn't like and it just made things incredibly complex to connect people and put a lot of strain on the servers to manage all those connections.

Comment Re:Obviously this can't work (Score 1) 507

You can set IE to high security mode by default and disable Flash, etc. Doing so breaks much of the web but is more secure.

And for some reason breaks local networking as well, nice one MS.

That as side, the fact that Vista still shipped with admin as user configuration baffles me. I'm a software developer and have been running XP with LUA (limited user accounts) for years now and am baffled by the complete lack of commitment by Microsoft. The decision to drop LUA as default is baffling, as well as the requirement of Visual Studios to require admin rights (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa972193.aspx).

The tools provided to resolve issues with existing software are mediocre at best and considering MS commitment to backwards compatibility, significantly under promoted. The concept of securing Windows without addressing everything running as admin issue (which has now changed to, 'check box to run as admin') is just a little insane.

All I can say it, provide tool to developers and user that highlight programs that violate the most basic security principle and provide answers for potential work a rounds, outing the offenders is the only way to get this resloved.

Comment Re:Its GPL licenced, someone should fork it. (Score 1) 408

And when the author didn't get the level of donations he was expecting, he lashed out like a child, adding obfuscated code to NoScript which modified, without the Firefox user's permission, AdBlock Plus's functionality

He only did that after Adblock started disabling his code which let ads display only on his website. While Adblock was fixing a potential issue, it was just in response to his NoScript setup.

Comment Patronizing as hell (Score 2, Funny) 171

"'Suppose we have the capacity to make it possible for the president of the United States at will to communicate with hundreds of thousands of Iranians at no risk or limited risk? It just changes the world.'"

Right, because those dumb Iranians couldn't possibly know anything until POTUS tells 'em about it. Obama will just do a two minute webcast on how many great jobs are available in the American auto industry, bookended by lolcats, and the government will fall!

Sheesh.

Comment Re:Everquest (Score 1) 92

haha subspace, biggest shit talking community in history. Amazing game... though SSCV (or whatever standard subspace rules) zones never hit critical mass enough for me to ever enjoy it like it was back in its hey day, or i'd be on it everyday... Give me back t-20 battles, please!

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The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. Seek simplicity and distrust it. -- Whitehead.

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