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Comment Re:Ugh (Score 1) 254

You should really evolve to start making use of the OOP features. Seriously, once you spend a few years applying OOP you will laugh at Wordpress, it's pretty terrible software. I'm not trying to be antagonistic or anything, it's just a step you should be making to be a better developer.

Comment Re:Assange said he likes crushing bastards (Score 1) 167

I may be wrong. but you appear to have deleted your initial comment which started this thread.

Can you say why? I was entertained by the argument but now I can't re-assess your initial position based on your arguments.

I have no solid opinion on the matter so please don't construe this as sarcasm.

Privacy

How The NSA Targets Tor 234

The Guardian has released new documents from Edward Snowden showing how the U.S. National Security Agency targets internet anonymity tool Tor to gather intelligence. One of the documents, a presentation titled "Tor Stinks," bluntly acknowledges how effective the tool is: "We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time. With manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users, however, no success de-anonymizing a user in response to a TOPI request/on demand." (Other documents: presentation 1, presentation 2.) The NSA is able to extract information sometimes, though, and Bruce Schneier details what we know of that process in an article of his own. "The NSA creates 'fingerprints' that detect http requests from the Tor network to particular servers. These fingerprints are loaded into NSA database systems like XKeyscore, a bespoke collection and analysis tool which NSA boasts allows its analysts to see "almost everything" a target does on the internet. ... After identifying an individual Tor user on the internet, the NSA uses its network of secret internet servers to redirect those users to another set of secret internet servers, with the codename FoxAcid, to infect the user's computer. FoxAcid is an NSA system designed to act as a matchmaker between potential targets and attacks developed by the NSA, giving the agency opportunity to launch prepared attacks against their systems." Schneier explains in a related article why it's important that we figure out exactly what the NSA is doing. "Given how inept the NSA was at protecting its own secrets, it's extremely unlikely that Edward Snowden was the first sysadmin contractor to walk out the door with a boatload of them. And the previous leakers could have easily been working for a foreign government."

Comment How the predictions happen... (Score 1) 201

We can not reliably say whether exposure N (mSv) will cause cancer in person P - we can only predict it based on previous observations.

Predicting the effect from radiation exposure is based on long-term epidemiological study data such as the Japan Life Span Study [1-3]. These compare the disease rates in large populations to neighbouring/control populations where radiation exposure was at natural levels.

These studies form the basis of a statistical reference when establishing the likelihood of developing an illness due to radiation exposure. They suggest that there is a ‘statistically significant increase of the risk of fatal cancer starting at the range of 50–100 mSv, possibly already at 10–50 mSv’ [4].

TFA: "Residents of Namie town and Iitate village, two areas that were not evacuated until months after the accident, received 10–50mSv"

Deterministic effects (i.e. observed reliably above a certain dose threshold) of exposure are seen above 100mSv [4].

TFA: "146 employees and 21 contractors received a dose of more than 100 millisieverts (mSv), the level at which there is an acknowledged slight increase in cancer risk. Six workers received more than the 250mSv allowed by Japanese law for front-line emergency workers, and two operators in the control rooms for reactor units 3 and 4 received doses above 600mSv".

Through previous observations of population exposures to radiation at similar levels, it is statistically likely that this accident will result in an increase in cancer incidence among this population.

[1] Preston, D.L., et al., Cancer Incidence in Atomic Bomb Survivors. Part III: Leukemia, Lymphoma and Multiple Myeloma, 1950-1987 Radiation Research, 1994. 137 (2 (Suppliment)): p. S68 - S97.
[2] Preston, D.L., et al., Solid Cancer Incidence in Atomic Bomb Survivors: 1958–1998. Radiation Research, 2007. 168(1): p. 1-64.
[3] Land, C.E., Studies of Cancer and Radiation Dose Among Atomic Bomb Survivors. The Example of Breast Cancer. JAMA, 1995. 274(5): p. 402 - 407.
[4] Vock, P., CT Dose Reduction in Children. European Radiology, 2005. 15: p. 2330-2340.

Comment Bad Practice (Score 1) 110

This seems redundant to me, since the way in which we find relevant answers from a vast source of information such as the internet needs to (and will) change considerably in the near future so that we no longer scan large volumes of information and search results.

If you consider that in terms of efficiency of getting 'an answer from a question' we currently:

Have Question -> get vast amounts of information from intertubes -> sort through information -> hopefully get answer.

But this is stupid. We can build things (as demonstrated by Siri and Wolfram with natural language processing) that do the processing for us, so we can:

Have Question -> Tell [algorithm] -> get answer.

This is the most efficient way to get an answer from a question, we don't need to be involved in sorting and processing of vast amounts of information. I'm sure that in the near future we geeks will make this happen.

Submission + - Happy 20th Birthday, GSM & SMS (guardian.co.uk)

udas writes: "2/3rds of the world's pupluation, 4 billion people, use cell phones today, and *all* of them have access to SMS. Groupe Spécial Mobile (GSM), set up in 1982, created the GSM standard, leading to a unified, open, standard-based mobile network. SMS, upto 160 7-bit character messages sent over control channels (when they aren't busy), was part of the original GSM specification itself. The first GSM handests were approved for sale in May 1992. But it was not until 1996, when pay-as-you-go sim cards showed up, and the kids got their hands on it, did SMS gain popularity. Today tey are used for advertising, notifications, surveying, etc!"

Comment Re:Wi-Fi (Score 5, Informative) 297

This is a good point, I've never gotten this either. According to the Wi-Fi page on Wikipedia,

"Wi-Fi" is a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance and the brand name for products using the IEEE 802.11 family of standards.".

The article goes on to explain that,,

"The term Wi-Fi, first used commercially in August 1999,[31] was coined by a brand-consulting firm called Interbrand Corporation that the Alliance had hired to determine a name that was "a little catchier than 'IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence'"

So there you go, it makes no sense technically because marketing people were involved.

Comment Big Cost, little demand (Score 1) 48

The 3D trial in Australia was a real non-event [http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD.PC/pc=PC_312131] since the cost of broadcast was excessive when considering the small amount of interest in watching 3D TV [http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/hometech/3d-tv-falls-flat-as-broadcasters-tune-out-20110902-1jp0u.html]

Comment Special launch offer expires in Date() + 3 days (Score 3, Interesting) 294

This part is awesome:

Your Dinky One-Time Investment Is Only $47!
(This is a special launch offer only, we're only opening this for the next 3 days only before the offer closes forever!)
Thats right. Your investment for the entire course is only $47 (this launch offer will closed anytime after February 26, 2011 )

Where February 26, 2011 is:
days = 3; // How many days to add to today
  d = new Date();
now = d.getTime(); // Add 10 days
d.setTime(now + days * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
document.getElementById("offerEnd1").innerHTML = formatDate(d);
function formatDate(d) {
var months = new Array("January", "February", "March", "April", "May", "June", "July", "August", "September", "October", "November", "December");
return months[d.getMonth()] + " " + d.getDate() + ", " + d.getFullYear();;

Submission + - Capacitive touchscreen usable with a stylus (diginfo.tv)

dk3nn3dy writes: Hitachi Displays have developed a capacitive touchscreen which converts input from a non-conductive object into electrostatic capacitance. This enables it to be used in a diverse range of ways, such as multi-touch using several fingers, with a plastic pen for finer input, and in cold places while wearing gloves. The display is currently under development for release in the second half of 2011.
Security

Submission + - Cracking Passwords with Amazon EC2 GPU Instances (stacksmashing.net) 1

suraj.sun writes: As of Nov-15, 2010, Amazon EC2 is providing what they call "Cluster GPU Instances": An instance in the Amazon cloud that provides you with the power of two NVIDIA Tesla “Fermi” M2050 GPUs. The exact specifications look like this:

        22 GB of memory
        33.5 EC2 Compute Units (2 x Intel Xeon X5570, quad-core “Nehalem” architecture)
        2 x NVIDIA Tesla “Fermi” M2050 GPUs
        1690 GB of instance storage
        64-bit platform
        I/O Performance: Very High (10 Gigabit Ethernet)
        API name: cg1.4xlarge

GPUs are known to be the best hardware accelerator for cracking passwords, so I decided to give it a try: How fast can this instance type be used to crack SHA1 hashes?

Using the CUDA-Multiforce, I was able to crack all hashes from this file with a password length from 1-6 in only 49 Minutes (1 hour costs 2.10$ by the way.). This just shows one more time that SHA1 is deprecated — You really don't want to use it anymore!

StackSmashing: http://stacksmashing.net/2010/11/15/cracking-in-the-cloud-amazons-new-ec2-gpu-instances/

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