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Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 280

That's true RNGs are not truly random. But, then again, neither is anything else. [...]

You fail at Quantum Mechanics.

Hardware random number generators

No, sir, you fail. You are forgetting the very essence of applied Science.

The randomness that appear in Quantum Physics is only part of an axiomatic model that tries to describe reality as far as we can measure it. The model is not the reality. What current Quantum Mechanics describes as random could very well be deterministic in a later, more accurate model.

Those Hardware RNGs definitely seem random in all possible ways, but what actually happens inside them can be ultimately deterministic. Who knows. Maybe God actually does play dice (or his own version of Warcraft, which is my personal guess).

Comment Re:I hope P.B. win this trial (Score 1) 406

If you cross me on the street asking about bootlegs, and I point you in the direction of the street-seller, am I guilty of aiding copyright infringement? Most reasonable people don't think so.

Perhaps not guilty in the legal sense, but if you actively and purposefully made it easier for the bootlegs to be sold, then you would have indeed aided copyright infringement.

Another thing is to discuss whether that is objectionable or not (I, for one, wouldn't raise an eyebrow in the case of your example, but others may do), or whether it is legal or not (which I don't know).

Comment Disable updates if you want (Score 4, Informative) 260

You can disable all that. Go to Tools -> Settings... -> Update

(Actual names may vary, I'm using Firefox in Spanish language)

There uncheck the three boxes under "Automatically search for updates..."

Then you'll have to click on Help -> Search for updates every time you want to update, but at least thou shalt not be nagged at (yes, I do understand you prefer to have Firefox update itself automatically and naglessly, but in the meantime...).

Portables

OLPC Downsizes Half of Its Staff, Cuts Sugar 379

One Laptop Per Chewbacca writes "Nicholas Negroponte, the leader of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, has announced that the organization will be laying off half of its staff, cutting salaries of the remaining employees, and ending its involvement in Sugar development. The organization has had serious problems with production and deployment and has been fragmented by ideological debates as Negroponte shifts the agenda away from software freedom and towards Windows. Ars Technica concludes: 'The OLPC project's extreme dependence on economy of scale has proven to be a fatal error. The organization was not able to secure the large bulk orders that it had originally anticipated and fell short of meeting its target $100 per unit price. The worldwide economic slowdown has made it even more difficult for OLPC to find developing countries that have cash to spare on education technology.'"

Comment Re:The good news (Score 1) 285

At least now we don't have to worry about our sun going nova, we'll all die in an intergalactic traffic accident first. Probably not. Even when galaxies collide, the odds of something hitting the solar system are remote.

Yes, but... how about the odds of our orbit being thrown slightly off-course by a foreign gravity field, just off enough to make Earth uninhabitable for us mammals? I have no idea, but these odds must be several orders of magnitude greater than those of a heads-on collision.

Internet Explorer

Microsoft Rushes Internet Explorer Patch 376

drquoz writes "Last week, it was reported that a critical security flaw was found in Internet Explorer. On Tuesday, experts were advising users not to use IE until a patch could be released. On Wednesday, Microsoft released the patch. An interesting quote from the article: 'Kandek suggests that Microsoft is at a disadvantage in updating Internet Explorer because its browser doesn't have a built-in update mechanism like other browser makers. Mozilla, for instance, just released Firefox 3.05 to Firefox users through its auto-update system.'"
Space

Galaxy Clusters' Stunted Growth Confirms Dark Energy 167

A new study of 86 galaxy clusters in the early universe has provided independent confirmation of the existence of dark energy. In its absence, gravity's pull should have caused the number of clusters to increase by a factor of 50 over the last 5.5 billion years. What is observed is a factor of 10 increase. "Together with earlier observations... the new data strengthen the suspicion — but do not prove — that dark energy is a weird antigravity called the cosmological constant that was hypothesized and then abandoned by Albert Einstein as a 'blunder' almost a century ago. If that is true, the universe is fated to empty itself out eventually, and all but the Milky Way's closest neighbors will eventually be out of sight. ... Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins and the Space Telescope Science Institute, said: 'If this was a fox hunt and dark energy was the fox, I think they have closed off another escape route. But there is still a lot of terrain left for the fox, and we've seen little more than a glimmer of fur.'"

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