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Software

Progress In Algorithms Beats Moore's Law 166

Posted by timothy from the when-bottlenecks-swap dept.
Relic of the Future writes "Seen on the blog 'Algorithmic Game Theory,' a report to congress and the president about past and future advances in information technology notes that, while improvements in hardware accounted for an approximate 1,000 fold increase in calculation speed over a 15-year time-span, improvements in algorithms accounted for an over 43,000 fold increase."

Comment Why this tool is crap anyway (Score 1) 93

by gmthor (#34194378) Attached to: Security App For the New German Personal ID Hacked
The current terms of service (which you accept when you get this thing) are that the program is safe by definition. The user has to keep the pc free of viruses. Zerodays are the users fault as well, what so ever.
Which basically means, when ever somebody does something bad with your id, the damage is yours.
They even read, that you should only keep it on the card reader for the few seconds of usage.
As if those few seconds are not enough for an attack. One thing that already works easily with an exploited pc is remotely changing the useres pin, without him knowing. Well....this already is a damage for the user of a couple euro + time loss because you have to go to the local citizen center. (can anybody thinks of a nice DOS attack on the city centers)
Bug

Why You See 'Free Public WiFi' In So Many Places 260

Posted by Soulskill from the deja-vu-all-over-again dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Almost anywhere you go these days (particularly at airports), if you check for available WiFi settings, you have a pretty good chance of seeing an ad hoc network for 'Free Public WiFi.' Of course, since it's ad hoc (computer to computer) it's not actually access to the internet. So why is this in so many places? Turns out it's due to a bug in Windows XP. Apparently, the way XP works is that if it can't find a 'favorite' WiFi hotspot, it automatically sets up the computer to broadcast itself as an ad hoc network point, using the name of the last connection the computer attempted. So... people see 'Free Public WiFi' and they try to log on. Then their own computer starts broadcasting the same thing, because it can't find a network it knows. And, like a virus, the 'Free Public WiFi' that doesn't work lives on and on and on."
Networking

Gigabit Speeds At Home In the US 249

Posted by Soulskill from the for-the-low-low-cost-of-way-too-much dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Electric Power Board of Chattanooga is preparing to offer 1 Gigabit speeds at home by the end of the year. 'The city-owned utility announced today it will boost its broadband service to 1 Gigabit throughout its service territory by the end of 2010. Such a connection will be 200 times faster than the average broadband speed in America and the fastest of any US city.' The NY Times reports that the service will cost $350 per month. 'Mr. DePriest of EPB does not expect brisk demand for the one-gigabit service anytime soon. So why offer it? "The simple answer is because we can," he said.'"

Comment Re:Wine? (Score 2, Insightful) 274

by gmthor (#33496360) Attached to: Breathing New Life Into Old DirectDraw Games
The Problem with Wine is, that from the user point of view, it is extremely unstable. It tried it out a couple time with games that had Gold or Silver status. None of them worked with the version I tried.
I think I would be really worth it, to stop developing more features for a while and add as many regression tests as possible to the project. So that the project gains stability. Since in the end, the real success is always determined by the end user.

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Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. -- Aldous Huxley

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