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Feed Google News Sci Tech: Sun Storms May Affect Radios, Cell Phones - ABC News (google.com)

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ABC News
Sun Storms May Affect Radios, Cell Phones
ABC News
By CHRISTINA NG (@ChristinaNg27) In this handout from NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory, a solar large flare erupts off the sun in space, June 7, 2011. (NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory/Getty Images) Intense solar activity may affect Earth today, ...
Massive solar storm 'will knock out radio signals and produce amazing Northern ... Daily Mail
Sun Storms May Slam Earth WednesdayFox News
Sun storms may super-charge the northern lightsmsnbc.com
The Daily Telegraph-Space.com-Discovery News
all 28 news articles

Technology

Submission + - Verizon adds $2 charge for paying your bill online (geek.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With 2012 about to start, it seems Verizon has decided paying your bill online or over the phone is now worthy of an extra charge. So, from January 15, anyone choosing to pay their monthly bill using either method will incur a $2 charge.

Verizon is classing the charge as a “convenience fee” which translates into them deciding allowing you to pay either online or over the phone is a convenience. They also explain in the FAQ above that the fee allows them, “to continue to support these bill payment options.” Really, Verizon? When did offering online payments or accepting phone calls from customers get so much more expensive?
Microsoft

Microsoft Proposes Fix For E-Voting Attack 111

Posted by Soulskill from the taking-out-the-trash dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "Microsoft Research has proposed mitigation for a known potential attack against verifiable electronic voting machines that could help prevent insiders from being able to alter votes after the fact. The countermeasure to the 'trash attack' involves adding a cryptographic hash to the receipts that voters receive (PDF). Many verifiable voting systems already include hashes on the receipts, but that hash is typically made from the ballot data for each specific voter. The idea proposed by Microsoft Research involves using a running hash that would add a hash of the previous voter's receipt to each person's receipt, ideally preventing a privileged insider from using discarded receipts to alter votes. The trash attack that the mitigation is designed to address involves election workers or others who might be motivated to change votes gathering discarded receipts and then altering those votes."
Networking

Submission + - Time Warner Cable Implements Packet Shaping (dslreports.com)

Submitted by
RFC
RFC writes: "Time Warner announces introduction of packet shaping technology.

"Packet shaping" technology has been implemented for newsgroup applications, regardless of the provider, and all peer-to-peer networks and certain other high bandwidth applications not necessarily limited to audio, video, and voice over IP telephony. Road Runner reserves the right to implement network management tools for other applications in the future."
United States

Submission + - U.S. Puts 12 Nations On Watch For Piracy

Submitted by
ColinPL
ColinPL writes: "China, Russia and 10 other nations were targeted by the Bush administration for failing to sufficiently protect American producers of music, movies and other copyrighted material from widespread piracy. The Bush administration on Monday placed the 12 countries on a "priority watch list" which will subject them to extra scrutiny and could eventually lead to economic sanctions if the administration decides to bring trade cases before the World Trade Organization."
Education

Evolution of Mammals Re-evaluated 249

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the shaking-the-tree-to-see-what-falls-out dept.
AaxelB writes "A study described in the New York Times rethinks mammalian evolution. Specifically, that the mass extinction of the dinosaurs had relatively little impact on mammals and that the steps in mammals' evolution happened well before and long after the dinosaurs' death."
Space

Submission + - Mysterious Hexagon Spotted Over Saturn

Submitted by
popo
popo writes: "A mysterious hexagon has been spotted on Saturn's North Pole by NASA's Cassini orbiter. The bizarre geometric formation spans the size of two planet Earths and is stationary with clouds spinning around it. Kevin Baines of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said: "This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides. ...We've never seen anything like this on any other planet.""
Software

Submission + - What is the best bug-as-a-feature?

Submitted by Bat Country
Bat Country writes: The workflow system at the department I develop for was hand-coded by my predecessor in a rather short amount of time, resulting in somewhat unreadable code with a number of interesting "features."

When I took over maintenance of the code base, I started patching bugs and cleaning up the code in preparation for a new set of features.

When I was done however, I got a pile of complaints about features which disappeared which turned out to be caused by the bugs in the code.
So that leads me to ask, what is your favorite bug that you either can't live without or makes your life easier?
Book Reviews

GWT Java AJAX Programming 100

Posted by samzenpus from the prefix-programming dept.
simon_kehler writes "The Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a Java AJAX framework that provides an easy to use programming paradigm for web developers using the Java programming language. It is one of the more recent entrants into this field, but has been gaining a lot of traction and popularity. GWT Java AJAX Programming authored by Prabhakar Chaganti and published by Packt Publishing addresses the use of GWT to build ajaxified user interfaces. The author gently introduces the reader to GWT and then leads the reader through a series of tasks, each of which shows how to perform an useful action with GWT." Read below for Simon's review.

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