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Comment Re:Have they (Score 2, Interesting) 78

That's a harsh way to put it. I would call it more of a "Protective Services" product.

You know, it would be terrible if this article came out detailing your illegal business practices...

In all seriousness, I'm curious how they verify submissions. All I could find was "The simplest and most effective countermeasure is a worldwide community of informed users and editors who can scrutinize and discuss leaked documents." What's stopping someone from making up a false story about a political/corporate enemy and submitting it to them?

Networking

IPv6 Adoption Will Grow With Smart Grid Adoption, Hopes Cisco 169

darthcamaro writes "A lot of people in the US have not seen a use case for the use of IPv6 yet, since we've got plenty of IPv4 addresses. But what happens when the entire electrical grid gets smart? The so-called Smart Grid will need a networking transport mechanism that will connect potentially hundreds of millions of people and devices. Networking giant Cisco sees IP (internet protocol) as the right transport and IPv6 as the logical choice for addressing. 'Pv6 is an interesting discussion and one that occupies a lot of bandwidth at Cisco,' Marie Hattar, Cisco's vice president of network systems and security solutions marketing said. 'Some people say that for smaller deployments, we could get away with IPv4, but the smart grid has a number of parts. The point is that if you're looking to build this [smart grid] out, why not build it out on the scalable protocol from the get-go?'"

Comment Re:Amazon S3 (Score 1) 272

Why build and maintain a server, just push it to amazon.

12000GB * $0.15/GB = $1800 a month. That's $21,600 a year. S3 is great for some things, terabytes upon terabytes of archival storage isn't it. That's not including the time (or bandwidth cost) it will take to upload all the data to the server...

Comment Re:OBD - On-Board Diagnostics (Score 2, Informative) 478

There's more than just reading error codes though. I wanted to install an aux in for my cars stereo. I checked online and I can easily buy the official Saab kit online for ~$40, the install is also fairly trivial, but the dealer wanted $100 to just hook up their computer and enable it on my stereo. Similar thing if I do any other modifications to the car, everything is run through a central computer which only official Saab dealers (or mechanics who want to shell out $20,000+ a year) can access.

Communications

How To Send Email When You're Dead 165

The Narrative Fallacy writes "'The Last Messages Club' is a new service that sends personal emails written prior to one's death to loved ones in the future. The messages can range from a final love letter, guidance for someone left behind, a list of instructions, details on life insurance and other financial information. 'No one likes to think about their impending "demise," but it is much better to be fully-prepared, so that there is less stress on your loved ones after you pass away,' says founder Geoff Reiss. The system works by giving each member a secure and private vault where they are able to create messages to be sent specifically to their chosen recipient. A secure process ensures that messages are only sent after at least two people appointed by the user have confirmed that you have died and other safety criteria are met. 'I thought at first that maybe it was a bit ghoulish but on consideration I think it's a great idea as it would be nice for loved ones to receive messages from me when I'm no longer here,' says a technical adviser to the company. 'It's strange really as it makes you confront your own mortality in a sense.'"
Games

On Realism and Virtual Murder 473

Gamasutra has an interesting article about how the push toward realistic graphics and extremely lifelike characters in modern games is making the term "murder simulator" — once laughed off for referring to pixelated dying Nazis — a concept to take more seriously. The author is careful to simply explore the issue, and not come to a specific conclusion; he doesn't say that we should or shouldn't prevent it from happening, only that it's worth consideration. (One section is even titled "Forget the kids," saying that decisions for what children play fall under parental responsibility.) Quoting: "We should start rethinking these issues now before we all slide down the slope together and can't pull ourselves back up again. Or, even worse, before governments step in and dictate what can and can't be depicted or simulated in video games via legislation. ... Obviously, what makes an acceptable game play experience for each player is a personal choice that should be judged on a person-by-person basis (or on a parent to child basis), and I believe it should stay that way. As for me, I'm already drawing the line at BioShock — I can barely stomach the game as it is. Sure, I could play it more and desensitize myself, but I don't want to. And that's just me. It's up to you and a million other adult gamers to decide what's best for yourselves and to draw the line on virtual violence where you feel most comfortable."

Comment Re:This is what I'd like to see (Score 1) 159

I can buy *any* TV I want then get cable or dish service from *any* provider I want.

I can buy a computer from *any* company and then get Internet from *any* provider I want.

I can buy a land-line phone from *any* phone maker and then get phone service from *any* provider I want.

Cable: exclusivity deals with towns, limited, if any selection

Internet: exclusivity deals with towns, limited, if any selection

Phone: exclusivity deals with towns, limited, if any selection

Not to mention these three are usually the same company...

I get your point though, I currently have an iPhone from AT&T, but I'm doing some development work on the G1, which conveniently supports all the 3G bands but AT&Ts, and the iPhone supports all the 3G bands but T-Mobile's...

Comment Re:Put on the fire-retardant suit, it's flame-time (Score 1) 567

Other than gamers, does anyone really need 3D drivers, etc?

Some quick anecdotal evidence (the best kind), ATI decided to stop supporting the graphics card in my laptop a little while back (the laptop is maybe a little over 2 years old, I think it has an X1400 in it), after upgrading to Ubuntu 9.04, the upgrade of Xorg (or Xfree or whatever is used) caused Boxee to stop working because ATI doesn't have a driver available for it, and the open source driver doesn't support the required OpenGL commands yet. However, for 95% of what I use the computer for the free one works well enough, but you can tell that they're not official (the screen has tearing occasionally)

 

To the original poster: I tried to install the proprietary ATI drivers and it killed the display, thankfully envy has an uninstall command as well.

Comment Re:Relief (Score 3, Informative) 300

Tools->Options->Applications. Search for 'pdf' and disable it from using the plugin to auto downloading and opening the file.

I also recommend using Foxit Reader instead of Acrobat for viewing PDFs, it too has a in browser plugin, but downloading and opening the application is quicker at least for me; the actual application usually opens in less than a second.

But back on topic, I have been using chrome more and more lately due to the fact that no tab can crash the entire browser. I still use Firefox though due to the plugins and the web developer toolbar with firebug (chrome's inspector is pretty close though). If Firefox doesn't catch up quick enough I might switch over completely when chrome has more advanced plugin support.

Windows

Microsoft To Disable Autorun 429

jchrisos writes "Microsoft is planning to disable autorun in the next Release Candidate of Windows 7 and future updates to Windows XP and Vista. In order to maintain a 'balance between security and usability,' non-writable media will maintain its current behavior however. In any case, if it means no more autorun on flash drives, removable hard drives and network shares, that is definitely a step in the right direction. Will be interesting to see what malware creators do to get around this ..."

Windows 95 Almost Autodetected Floppy Disks 334

bonch writes "Windows 95 almost shipped with a technique for detecting whether a floppy disk was inserted without spinning up the drive. Microsoft's floppy driver developer discovered a sequence of commands that detected a disk without spinup — unfortunately, unspecified behavior in the floppy hardware specification meant that half the drives worked one way and half the other, each giving opposite results for the detection routine. Microsoft considered a dialog prompting the user to insert a disk to 'train' the routine, but the idea was scrapped."
Image

How To Rack Up $28,000 In Roaming Without Leaving the US 410

pmbasehore writes "While waiting for his cruise ship to depart, a man decided to use his AT&T wireless card and Slingbox account to watch the Bears vs. Lions football game. When he got his bill, he was slammed with $28,067.31 in 'International Roaming' charges, even though he never left American soil. The bill was finally dropped to $290.65, but only after the media got involved." He might have left the soil (the story says he was already aboard the ship), but shouldn't the dock count?
Books

Author's Guild Says Kindle's Text-To-Speech Software Illegal 683

Mike writes "The Author's Guild claims that the new Kindle's text-to-speech software is illegal, stating that 'They don't have the right to read a book out loud,' said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. 'That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.' Forget for a moment that text-to-speech doesn't copy an existing work. And forget the odd notion that the artificial enunciation of plain text is equivalent to a person's nuanced and emotive reading. The Guild's claim is that even to read out loud is a production akin to an illegal copy, or a public performance."

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