Comment Oh God No... (Score 5, Insightful) 222
Please don't give this classic movie the crystal skull treatment. It doesn't deserve that.
Comment Re:easily defeated, only if you disable the vector (Score 3, Insightful) 116
DoD is very big, and there are hundreds of thousands of DoD computers that don't follow the simplest security best practices. Just because the NSA publishes a document on how a Windows box should be configured, doesn't mean it gets configured that way in the field. Military IT is just like social issues; The only area not being neglected and starved of resources is the last area to have a major shitstorm.
Comment Another short-lived gimmick (Score 1) 594
This latest crop of 2D-to-3D technology is best used in 5-minute amusement park rides, where all the other 3D tech belongs. At best, it provides a few cool moments during the action scenes. At worst, you have a headache after too many blurry shapes try to trick your brain into seeing depth that isn't there and have to stop watching.
Comment Re:Somewhere, a coder is polishing his resume (Score 3, Informative) 291
Our CIO has a programming background and once fixed some database code we were having problems with. This is a 10,000 person organization with an IT staff of around 300. It's not hard to imagine a small company where the IT director takes on some programming tasks.
Submission + - Patent case ruling against Microsoft overturned (theage.com.au)
some_guy_88 writes: "The $338 million verdict against Microsoft disucssed here previously for violating a patent held by Uniloc has been overturned. Ric Richardson, who divides his time between NSW, Australia and California, is the founder of Uniloc, which sued Microsoft in 2003 for violating its patent relating to technology designed to deter software piracy."
Submission + - Police Can't Place GPS on Autos without Warrant
pickens writes: "EFF reports that the Supreme Court of Massachusetts has held in Commonwealth v. Connolly that police may not place GPS tracking devices on cars without first getting a warrant reasoning that the installation of the GPS device was a seizure of the suspect's vehicle. Search and seizure is a legal procedure used in many civil law and common law legal systems whereby police or other authorities and their agents, who suspect that a crime has been committed, do a search of a person's property and confiscate any relevant evidence to the crime. According to the decision "when an electronic surveillance device is installed in a motor vehicle, be it a beeper, radio transmitter, or GPS device, the government's control and use of the defendant's vehicle to track its movements interferes with the defendant's interest in the vehicle notwithstanding that he maintains possession of it." Although the case only protects drivers in Massachusetts, another recent state court case, People v. Weaver in the State of New York, also held that because modern GPS devices are far more powerful than beepers, police must get a warrant to use the trackers, even on cars and people traveling the public roads. "Massachusetts and New York are in the forefront of protecting their citizens' right to location privacy against technological encroachment," writes Jennifer Granick, Civil Liberties Director at the EFF. "Federal courts should do the same under the Fourth Amendment. For the Constitution to have continued relevance in a technological world, it should protect the privacy that individuals reasonably anticipate as we move through the world, and that means no pervasive, remote, suspicionless, wholesale tracking by GPS or other device.""
Comment Re:i'd just like to (Score 4, Funny) 374
Give it up already, Richard.
Submission + - Disney Buys Marvel
whisper_jeff writes: Disney has announced they will be purchasing Marvel.
"Building on its strategy of delivering quality branded content to people around the world, The Walt Disney Company /quotes/comstock/13*!dis/quotes/nls/dis (DIS 26.52, -0.32, -1.19%) has agreed to acquire Marvel Entertainment, Inc. in a stock and cash transaction, the companies announced today."
"Building on its strategy of delivering quality branded content to people around the world, The Walt Disney Company
Submission + - OS deathmatch: Snow Leopard vs. Windows 7 (computerworld.com)
BeckySharp writes: With the nearly simultaneous release of Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" (available right now) and Microsoft's Windows 7 (available Oct. 22), you get the inevitable debate: Which is the better operating system, Windows 7 or Snow Leopard? To help determine that, Computerworld's Preston Gralla put both operating systems through their paces, selected categories for a head-to-head competition, and then chose a winner in each category.
Submission + - Dad Builds 700 pound Cannon for Son's Birthday 1
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Charleston Daily Mail reports that machinist Mike Daugherty built his son a working cannon for his birthday — not a model — a real working cannon. "It looks like something right out of the battle at Gettysburg," says Daugherty. The 700 pound cast iron and steel howitzer, designed to use comparatively small explosive charges to propel projectiles at relatively high trajectories with a steep angle of descent, has a 4-inch gun barrel that is 36 inches long mounted on a wooden gun carriage with two 36- inch diameter wheels and took Daugherty about two weeks to build at a cost of about $6,000. "I've always been interested in the Civil War and cannons, so I thought it would be a good gift," says Daugherty's 11-year old son Logan. Daugherty said he is not worried about the federal government coming to get his son's cannon because he spoke to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and found it is legal to own such a cannon because it does not use a firing pin and is muzzle loaded so the government does not consider the weapon a threat. Two days after the family celebrated Logan's 11th birthday, father and son offered a field demonstration of the new cannon on top of a grassy hill overlooking Fairmont, West Virginia and on the third try, the blank inside the barrel went boom and a canon was born. For a followup they popped a golf ball into the gun barrel, lit the fuse, and watched the golf ball split the sky and land about 600 yards away. "Any rebels charging up this hill would be in trouble with a cannon like this at the top," Logan says."
Submission + - Internet's First Registered Domain Name Sold (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: "Believe it or not, it wasn't iternet.com or dot.com that was purchased when the Internet was "born." Instead, it was the somewhat off-the-wall name of symbolics.com. The Symbolics company was the first
to use an internet domain name to guide Internet viewers to its line of Lisp machines, which were single-user computers optimized to run the Lisp programming language. XF.com
Investments, which is a Missouri-based Internet investments firm,
has managed to secure the domain name from its original owner for an undisclosed sum and XF's CEO was quick to proclaim his excitement over the acquisition. It's hard to say why this domain name was the first purchased back on March 15, 1985, but for obvious reasons it holds a special place in history. There has been one original owner for nearly 25 years. Over that time, we've seen the Internet grow to the tune of 180,000,000+ registered domains, and thousands more are being added each and every day."
Comment Re:If you're downloading music at work... (Score 1) 451
The environment varies considerably depending on what agency or department you work for. Many people work for the government because they can be involved with projects that just don't exist in the private sector.
Comment Re:Can't budget for human stupidity (Score 1) 63
I don't think implementing a few basic security practices are going to cause idea stagnation, yet best practices are constantly shot down in favor of sexy monitoring software. I guess it makes sense for a manager. What you would rather put on your resume?
"Implemented 2 million dollar intrusion detection and anti-malware enterprise software solution with staff of security engineers monitoring network traffic 24/7"
OR
"Took the damn users out of the local administrators group."
"Implemented 2 million dollar intrusion detection and anti-malware enterprise software solution with staff of security engineers monitoring network traffic 24/7"
OR
"Took the damn users out of the local administrators group."
Comment Re:Can't budget for human stupidity (Score 4, Insightful) 63
If the grandparent's organization is anything like mine, the issue isn't the lack of technical solutions for locking down computers. It's the unwillingness of managers to put their neck on the line and sign off on suggestions like this.
Comment Instead of dentistry... (Score 5, Funny) 61
Maybe they should have increased their weapons research budget instead.
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