Comment Re:Ctrl-alt-del (Score 4, Informative) 109
Whomever modded this offtopic needs to read the front page. And then mod it funny.
Ship Anchor, Not Sabotaging Divers, Possibly Responsible For Outage 43
Nerval's Lobster writes "This week, Egypt caught three men in the process of severing an undersea fiber-optic cable. But Telecom Egypt executive manager Mohammed el-Nawawi told the private TV network CBC that the reason for the region's slowdowns was not the alleged saboteurs — it was damage previously caused by a ship. On March 22, cable provider Seacom reported a cut in its Mediterranean cable connecting Southern and Eastern Africa, the Middle East and Asia to Europe; it later suggested that the most likely cause of the incident was a ship anchor, and that traffic was being routed around the cut, through other providers. But repairs to the cable took longer than expected, with the Seacom CEO announcing March 23 that the physical capability to connect additional capacity to services in Europe was "neither adequate nor stable enough," and that it was competing with other providers. The repairs continued through March 27, after faults were found on the restoration system; that same day, Seacom denied that the outage could have been the work of the Egyptian divers, but said that the true cause won't be known for weeks. 'We think it is unlikely that the damage to our system was caused by sabotage,' the CEO wrote in a statement. 'The reasons for this are the specific location, distance from shore, much greater depth, the presence of a large anchored vessel on the fault site which appears to be the cause of the damage and other characteristics of the event.'"
Comment Re:Can still charge (Score 1) 91
Let's agree that each plan has equal administrative overhead costs, and that for each plan this cost is $10 (actual admin cost should be nowhere near that, but hey, this AT&T we're talking about). So, that leaves $5 for 200MB of data, and $15 for 2GB of data. So, 1/3 the cost for only 1/10 the data? OP's point still stands. They're screwing you on the high(er) end plans, but they're screwing you even worse on the low end.
Comment Re:Nothing new or groundbreaking here (Score 1) 175
I wasn't discounting it, just saying it's nothing new, not to mention it's nowhere near novel. Visible light communication was pioneered in the 1880s! http://bemri.org/visible-light-communication.html
Comment Nothing new or groundbreaking here (Score 1) 175
Old modems with external LEDs (as well as other network equipment with TX/RX LEDs) were susceptible to data leakage just by reading the LED modulations. This is just faster. http://www.alge.no/ebooks/Optical_tempest.pdf
Comment Re:Getting the game is easy... (Score 0) 72
even worse, if the controller is, in fact, a bitch.
Comment Re:How long before... (Score 1) 108
Even at full light speed, something as relatively close as the moon is over 2.5 seconds for minimum RTT.
Comment Just cut... (Score 1) 504
the days bills come.
ASCAP Seeks Licensing Fees For Guitar Hero Arcade 146
Self Bias Resistor writes "According to a post on the Arcade-Museum forums, ASCAP is demanding an annual $800 licensing fee from at least one operator of a Guitar Hero Arcade machine, citing ASCAP licensing regulations regarding jukeboxes. An ASCAP representative allegedly told the operator that she viewed the Guitar Hero machine as a jukebox of sorts. The operator told ASCAP to contact Raw Thrills, the company that sells the arcade units. The case is ongoing and GamePolitics is currently seeking clarification of the story from ASCAP."
Comment Re:I Second this (Score 1) 970
Hell, I just bought a *color* networked LED printer (similar to laser) for $140 shipped to my door, and I've used some of those sub-$100 HP lasers. For most home desktop use, they're fine, and you can't beat the cost per page on a laser/LED...the one I just bought is in the $.03-.04 per page range for color.
