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Comment Re:I hope they have offline backups (Score 1) 52

That's why we need a law prohibiting paying the ransom, so that organizations will not pay it even when it's hard not to. They are funding the ransoming, and ensuring that it will happen more. They need to be funding security, not criminals.

They're victims of a crime. Should it be illegal for bank tellers or people walking down the street being robbed to give them the money/jewelry/phone if threatened because then robbers will know it might work and propagate robberies? I assume you would begin making exceptions for things like hospital systems whose services are ground to a halt. That list would quickly get prohibitively long. I think the economic devastation that would be downstream from the massive number of orgs that could otherwise not recover, all the orgs/employees/etc. that rely on them are now dead, etc. would be worse -- especially when you factor in cyber insurance and that the threat actors would quickly pivot to another mechanism to skirt around the restrictions and benefit.

Comment The Need of Certifications (Score 1) 444

Certifications are only important if you want to claim you have knowledge of an area but have absolutely no other way of showing that you know it.

If you do have the experience, you give good examples of what you have done which require that knowledge. Simply listing a certification equates to, "Though I haven't done anything to show it, if I was given that task, there is a CHANCE that I could accomplish it." Obviously if you're coming in with no experience, some indication that you can handle the job is helpful. However, going out of your way to get additional hands-on experience will make the potential employer more comfortable than just saying if you had done so, you would have been successful.
Software

Opera Dominates CNET Survey of "Underdog" Web Browsers 173

An anonymous reader writes "Whether you consider Opera an underdog browser or not, it came out on top in a feature on CNet this weekend. It was up against 'underdog Web browsers' Camino, K-Meleon, Shiira and Arora in a piece loosely aimed at determining whether these browsers are yet ready to steal significant numbers of users from Firefox, Safari, IE etc. Interesting most to me, however, is that it transpires that Shiira, the Mac browser from Japan, is one of the fastest browsers on the planet, beating the original Chrome v1.0, Firefox 3.5 and more in its benchmark tests."

Comment Re:There's also okcupid (Score 2, Informative) 311

Yea, they were a group of friends from Harvard that majored in math & CS. They actually post some technical details of how they calculate the matches here. They even have a technology section where they say which programming languages they use as well as their own open source webserver. I don't work for OKCupid or anything, I just thought it was cool that it's run by our kind and they're not afraid to include such nerdy information on their FAQ pages.

Comment Re:Go old school (Score 1) 1354

On a serious note, one of the problems he's going to have is figuring out the kind of person he wants. I'm guessing he has little/no experience. Even if he thinks he knows what he would like, the reality of being with this kind of person may be nothing like what he expected.

JustShootMe: In short, try to get experience with different types of people to see what it is you really like.

PS -- Try to see these girls as humans just like everyone else or you're going to get walked all over. You can learn this now and get a better response from the girls (as well as building healthier relationships), or you can realize it once you've become bitter from a crappy relationship with a girl you resent for doing just what you let her do. (This one goes out to you, Tony!)

Comment Re:Only for casual gamers (Score 1) 275

Actually, "god mode" would ruin games such as Doom for me. That's why I only would use it on a game once I got tired of playing it. Then I'd just go crazy, blow through the game, and be done with it. After completely annihilating every monster with the unlimited ammo of the supergun and winning, there wasn't much fun for me going back and poking around with a shotgun. I'm sure it's not the same for everyone, but I doubt if I'm the only one that gets bored with a game after playing it through in god mode.
The Internet

Opera 10.0 Released, With Integrated Web Server Functionality 437

sherl0k writes "Opera 10.0, dubbed Opera Unite, has been released. Built into the Web browser is a full-fledged Web server, complete with nifty little gadgets such as a 'fridge' that people can post notes onto, a chat room, a widget to stream your music library anywhere, and a built-in file-sharing mechanism. It also scores 100/100 on the Acid3 test." Readers fudreporter and TLS point to The Register's report on the new release and a 5-minute video demo, respectively. Update: 06/16 15:18 GMT by T: Roar Lauritzsen of Opera Software writes to point out that "release" isn't quite the right word here; though you can download it, version 10.0 is still in beta, and the version with Unite is a labs (experimental) release.

Comment What Is Its History? (Score 1) 800

If the domain was previously owned and expired, it may have just been snatched back up in the hopes that the original owner made a mistake or to get some visitors expecting the old site.

If this is the case, and it isn't a valuable domain already (where it is sure to sell), e-mailing simply alerts the owner that there is someone interested in the domain. They may only have registered it for a 1-year test to see if it gets any bites. If you don't think it will be snatched up otherwise, you can try to simply backorder the domain with a service like GoDaddy and wait for the year to end. I just recovered the domain for a friend's restaurant doing this on Tuesday. I had set him up with a temporary domain last year after losing it so he would still have a presence. It's just redirected now.
Image

Fish Pedicures 3

A northern Virginia spa is making big waves by offering fish pedicures. John Ho and Yvonne Le have been offering the treatments for four months in their salon, Yvonne Hair and Nails. Customers place their feet in tanks of water where tiny carp eat the dead skin. The couple says over 5,000 people have had the skin eaten off their feet so far and John hopes to start a chain of Doctor Fish Massage franchises and is evaluating a full-body fish treatment. I think Mr. Ho is on to something here. It shouldn't be that hard to teach my lab to give French manicures, she chews on her own nails all the time.
Education

Correcting Misperceptions About Evolution 838

Beagle writes "The science of evolution is often misunderstood by the public and a session at the recent AAAS meeting in Boston covered three frequently misapprehended topics in evolutionary history, the Cambrian explosion, origin of tetrapods, and evolution of human ancestors, as well as the origin of life. The final speaker, Martin Storksdieck of the Institute for Learning Innovation, covered how to communicate the data to a public that 'has such a hard time accepting what science is discovering.' His view: 'while most of the attention has focused on childhood education, we really should be going after the parents. Everyone is a lifelong learner, Storksdieck said, but once people leave school, that learning becomes a voluntary matter that's largely driven by individual taste.'"

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