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Comment Moving is always an option (Score 1) 405

by gowen (#48380129) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How To Unblock Email From My Comcast-Hosted Server?

"When I ask my other tech friends what they would do, they simply suggest changing ISPs. Nobody likes Comcast, but I don't have a choice here. I'm two years into a three-year contract. So, moving is not an option"

Moving is always an option. But you have to eat the cost of one year of Comcast. Sorry, but that's your solution.

Comment Re:You made this? (Score 1) 306

And to be fair to Sony, this is almost certainly the result of an automated scanning system that identified what it thought was Sony content, and blocked it per Sony's policy on their own content. Whether or not that should be a valid way of protecting one's IP is a separate question, but I'm 99% certain there's no malice on Sony's part here, and it will likely be resolved within a day or two.

Comment Tassimo Did It (Score 1) 769

by TheSpoom (#46394169) Attached to: The Next Keurig Will Make Your Coffee With a Dash of "DRM"

This has been done. Tassimo has barcodes on their 'pods' that tell the system how to brew that particular pod. It lets the system have greater variety, e.g. there are latte, cappuccino, cocoa pods.

It was quickly reverse engineered on the internet.

Moral: Unless this thing has a mandatory internet connection, it's not going to stop anything.
Space

Is Earth Weighed Down By Dark Matter? 247

Posted by samzenpus from the big-boned dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes "There may be a giant ring of dark matter invisibly encircling the Earth, increasing its mass and pulling much harder on orbiting satellites than anything invisible should pull, according to preliminary research from a scientist specializing the physics of GPS signaling and satellite engineering. The dark-matter belt around the Earth could represent the beginning of a radically new understanding of how dark matter works and how it affects the human universe, or it could be something perfectly valid but less exciting despite having been written up by New Scientist and spreading to the rest of the geek universe on the basis of a single oral presentation of preliminary research at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December. The presentation came from telecom- and GPS satellite expert Ben Harris, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Texas- Arlington, who based his conclusion on nine months' worth of data that could indicate Earth's gravity was pulling harder on its ring of geostationary GPS satellites than the accepted mass of the Earth would normally allow. Since planets can't gain weight over the holidays like the rest of us, Harris' conclusion was that something else was adding to the mass and gravitational power of Earth – something that would have to be pretty massive but almost completely undetectable, which would sound crazy if predominant theories about the composition of the universe didn't assume 80 percent of it was made up of invisible dark matter. Harris calculated that the increase in gravity could have come from dark matter, but would have had to be an unexpectedly thick collection of it – one ringing the earth in a band 120 miles thick and 45,000 miles wide. Making elaborate claims in oral presentations, without nailing down all the variables that could keep a set of results from being twisted into something more interesting than the truth is a red flag for any scientific presentation, let alone one making audacious claims about the way dark matter behaves or weight of the Earth, according to an exasperated counterargument from Matthew R. Francis, who earned a Ph.D. in physics and astronomy from Rutgers in 2005, held visiting and assistant professorships at several Northeastern universities and whose science writing has appeared in Ars Technica, The New Yorker, Nautilus, BBC Future and others including his own science blog at Galileo's Pendulum."
Crime

CryptoLocker Gang Earns $30 Million In Just 100 Days 202

Posted by timothy from the only-need-to-win-a-few dept.
DavidGilbert99 writes "A report from Dell Secureworks earlier this week reported that up to 250,000 systems have been infected with the pernicious ransomware known as CryptoLocker. Digging a little deeper, David Gilbert at IBTimes UK found that the average ransom being paid was $300, and than on a very conservative basis just 0.4% of people paid the ransom. What does this all add up to? $30 million for the gang controlling CryptoLocker — and this could be 'many times bigger.'"

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