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Comment Re:B&W? (Score 3, Informative) 50

It's an e-ink reader; it's supposed to be greyscale. While colour e-ink screens are now available, they're still *very* new technology, and not yet present in any currently shipping devices that I'm aware of.

Comment Re:data storage? (Score 3, Insightful) 98

Actually, if the Internet backbone ever reached exabit/sec speeds, the whole way we viewed data storage would change. I see no reason why most computers would need local storage at all.

Latency is why. It doesn't matter how fast the link to your storage is, if it's several ms away from you the delay gets annoying *real* fast.

Medicine

Arizona Governor Proposes Flab Tax 978

Hugh Pickens writes "The WSJ reports that Arizona governor Jan Brewer has proposed levying a $50 fee on some enrollees in the state's cash-starved Medicaid program, including obese people who don't follow a doctor-supervised slimming regimen and smokers. Brewer says the proposal is a way to reward good behavior and raise awareness that certain conditions, including obesity, raise costs throughout the system. 'If you want to smoke, go for it,' says Monica Coury, spokeswoman for Arizona's Medicaid program. 'But understand you're going to have to contribute something for the cost of the care of your smoking.' Coury says Arizona officials hadn't yet finalized how they would determine whether a person was obese or had sufficiently followed a wellness plan, but that measures such as body-mass index could provide some guidance. Estimates for the costs of obesity in America range from about $150 billion to $270 billion a year. According to the latest CDC statistics, from 2009, 25.5% of Arizonans are obese, about 1.7 million people."
Google

How Google Avoided Paying $60 Billion In Taxes 1193

bonch writes "Google only pays a 2.4% tax rate using money-funneling techniques known as the 'Double Irish' and the 'Dutch Sandwich,' even though the US corporate income tax is 35%. By using Irish loopholes, money is transferred legally between subsidiaries and ends up in island sanctuaries that have no income tax, giving Google the lowest tax rate amongst its technology peers. Facebook is planning to use the same strategy."
Government

Obama Wants Broader Internet Wiretap Authority 646

An anonymous reader writes "The White House plans to deliver a bill to Congress next year that will require Internet-based communication services that use encryption to be capable of decrypting messages to comply with federal wiretap orders. The bill will go beyond CALEA to apply to services such as Blackberry email. Even though RIM has stated that it does not currently have an ability to decrypt messages via a master key or back door, the bill may require them to. Regarding this development, James Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology commented on the proposal, saying, 'They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function.'"
Science

New Zealand Scientists Make Atom-Trapping Breakthrough 101

Mogster writes with this news from New Zealand: "'University of Otago scientists have made a 'major physics breakthrough' with the development of a technique to consistently isolate and capture a fast-moving single atom. A team of four researchers from the university's physics department are believed to be the first to isolate and photograph the Rubidium 85 atom.' Good to see Kiwis following in Rutherford's footsteps."
Privacy

Iris Scanning Set To Secure City In Mexico 265

kkleiner writes "The million-plus citizens of Leon, Mexico are set to become the first example of a city secured through the power of biometric identification. Iris and face scanning technologies from Global Rainmakers, Inc. will allow people to use their eyes to prove their identify, withdraw money from an ATM, get help at a hospital, and even ride the bus. Whether you're jealous or intimidated by Leon's adoption of widespread eye identification you should pay attention to the project – similar biometric checkpoints are coming to locations near you. Some are already in place."

Comment Re:Axe job (Score 1) 338

You're missing the point. The issue is not that the project has problems - the issue is that the Diaspora devs are making elementary mistakes that should never have been made. The problems that have been pointed out essentially mean that they're clueless about how to write secure code, and as such anything they write / are responsible for is automatically suspect.

In order for Diaspora to be at all credible, the devs need to learn a hell of a lot about security first, or someone else needs to take over the project - the kind of mistakes they're making here are elementary, and shows that not only do they have almost no knowledge of how to make a web application secure, they also aren't thinking through the logical consequences of what they're writing.

Diaspora isn't doomed because it has flaws, it's doomed because the developers have proven themselves to be fundamentally incompetent.

Google

Google Caffeine Drops MapReduce, Adds "Colossus" 65

An anonymous reader writes "With its new Caffeine search indexing system, Google has moved away from its MapReduce distributed number crunching platform in favor of a setup that mirrors database programming. The index is stored in Google's BigTable distributed database, and Caffeine allows for incremental changes to the database itself. The system also uses an update to the Google File System codenamed 'Colossus.'"

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