Questions: https://interviews.slashdot.or...

and

Answers: https://interviews.slashdot.or...

And make it 2 out of 3!

a 5 digit palindrome here. A newbie but with style.

Can't vouch for Ikea's new couches, but their Karlstad line was designed by idiots. 99% of the skeleton of the couch is made out of real wood (pine I think), EXCEPT the parts that hold the legs, where most of the stress occurs, which are made out of particle board.

Should wolfram's tech support be as advanced as wofram's products?

While viewing stories in "0 Abbreviated and 0 Hidden" mode I noticed threads where the parent comment was missing but the replys are still there!

Censorship Soviet Union style (pre photoshop) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

In my case, based on hdparm -t on xubuntu and centos, the difference between a properly aligned Samsung EVO and an improperly aligned Samsung EVO is 510 MB/sec and 182 MB/sec respectively

http://cillian.wordpress.com/2... has some good info on setting up Samsung EVO properly on linux

http://it.slashdot.org/story/13/11/01/0120220/airgap-jumping-malware-may-use-ultrasonic-networking-to-communicate

Airgap-Jumping Malware May Use Ultrasonic Networking To Communicate

"Dan Goodwin writes at Ars Technica about a rootkit that seems straight out of a science-fiction thriller. According to security consultant Dragos Ruiu one day his MacBook Air, on which he had just installed a fresh copy of OS X, spontaneously updated the firmware that helps it boot. Stranger still, when Ruiu then tried to boot the machine off a CD ROM, it refused and he also found that the machine could delete data and undo configuration changes with no prompting. Next a computer running the Open BSD operating system also began to modify its settings and delete its data without explanation or prompting and further investigation showed that multiple variants of Windows and Linux were also affected. But the story gets stranger still. Ruiu began observing encrypted data packets being sent to and from an infected laptop that had no obvious network connection with—but was in close proximity to—another badBIOS-infected computer. The packets were transmitted even when the laptop had its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth cards removed. Ruiu also disconnected the machine's power cord so it ran only on battery to rule out the possibility it was receiving signals over the electrical connection. Even then, forensic tools showed the packets continued to flow over the airgapped machine. Then, when Ruiu removed internal speaker and microphone connected to the airgapped machine, the packets suddenly stopped. With the speakers and mic intact, Ruiu said, the isolated computer seemed to be using the high-frequency connection to maintain the integrity of the badBIOS infection as he worked to dismantle software components the malware relied on. It's too early to say with confidence that what Ruiu has been observing is a USB-transmitted rootkit that can burrow into a computer's lowest levels and use it as a jumping off point to infect a variety of operating systems with malware that can't be detected. It's even harder to know for sure that infected systems are using high-frequency sounds to communicate with isolated machines. But after almost two weeks of online discussion, no one has been able to rule out these troubling scenarios, either. 'It looks like the state of the art in intrusion stuff is a lot more advanced than we assumed it was,' says Ruiu. 'The take-away from this is a lot of our forensic procedures are weak when faced with challenges like this. A lot of companies have to take a lot more care when they use forensic data if they're faced with sophisticated attackers.'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_science

and two positives make it a negative :)

The Slashdot headline, not the physics.

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/

This is actually a DARPA help wanted ad. And from description of the project sounds like a good job opportunity for some slashdoters.

here is the ad:
http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2012/12/14.aspx

and here is the proposers' day conference:
https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=e21984e31d49c3780966a53983daa4f6&tab=core&tabmode=list&=

in my case, poor/bad cables, especially the ones you buy, rather than ones you make, rank very low on things that actually happen. before I check the actual cable I do other things:

1. see if nic led is on, both on router and computer
2. ping the gateway
3. see if there was traffic on the nic
4. re-seat the cable, especially if plastic clip is missing - if that is the case I change the cable.
5. if distance is short, replace cable

had an interesting experience with a bad "connection". One summer the well pump, which is drilled inside the old stone well, 80 ft below ground, stopped working. The plumber comes, he climbs half way down the stone well in order to reach the well-cap, takes the entire pump+hose+wire (80ft) out, tests the pump, concludes that the pump is dead, replaces the pump, the wire (80ft), and makes a new water-tight connection. A year later the pump stops working again and I call the same plumber. My instinct was that the water-tight connection, 80 ft below ground, leaked, and made a short. The plumber comes, and rather than pulling out 80ft of pump to test the water-tight connection, the first thing he does is disconnect the pump from the mechanical fuse. And guess what... the mechanical fuse was bad. The fuse would trip even when there was nothing connected to it.

two parter:

1. Do you think the touch screen interface already the standard on phones and tablets will replace the traditional standard of keyboard & mouse interface on desktops/laptops in the next 5 years, 10 years, 20 years?

2. On a desktop/laptop, do you think a touch screen interface would be as functional/productive/efficient as keyboard & mouse?

thanks