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Facebook

Rusty Foster Isn't Dead 162

Posted by timothy from the pass-it-on dept.
While he was vacationing with his wife, Kuro5hin founder Rusty Foster was killed — at least in the eyes of Facebook. NBC News details how it happened: a "pal" pranked both Foster and Facebook by notifying the social site of Foster's supposed death, providing as documentation the obituary of another, much older man by the same name. Getting the Facebook version of his life back took some doing; based on this article it seems much easier to convince Facebook that you're dead than that you're alive.
Math

Goldbach Conjecture: Closer To Solved? 170

Posted by timothy from the eventually-knock-it-down-to-one dept.
mikejuk writes "The Goldbach conjecture is not the sort of thing that relates to practical applications, but they used to say the same thing about electricity. The Goldbach conjecture is reasonably well known: every integer can be expressed as the sum of two primes. Very easy to state, but it seems very difficult to prove. Terence Tao, a Fields medalist, has published a paper that proves that every odd number greater than 1 is the sum of at most five primes. This may not sound like much of an advance, but notice that there is no stipulation for the integer to be greater than some bound. This is a complete proof of a slightly lesser conjecture, and might point the way to getting the number of primes needed down from at most five to at most 2. Notice that no computers were involved in the proof — this is classical mathematical proof involving logical deductions rather than exhaustive search."

Comment Re:Napping (Score -1) 277

by Pr0n K1ng (#39137341) Attached to: Interrupted Sleep Might Be the Best Kind

I think this is what you meant to type:

"Call it a self discovery, but I found fapping after I get home from work for two hours is life changing. It clear sthe mind from stress and when you finish, you feel like the work day happened just 12 hours ago. Feeling mentally and physically detached from the office has been extremely beneficial to me. But then again, I suppose it's because I do work about 50 to 55 hours a week."
Idle

Submission + - The RMS Rider (mysociety.org)

Submitted by larry bagina
larry bagina writes: It's no secret that rock stars have riders — provisions on their contractual appearances that require a bowl of brown-free m&ms or specify the exact brand of bottled water, cocaine purity, etc. Well, Richard Stallman has his own list of provisions. Nothing about toe jam, oddly enough.

I can't wait to see Eric Raymond's rider!
Security

Prototyping Boards Make It Easier To Find Flaws in Specialized Hardware 56

Posted by timothy from the arduino-nuclear-plant dept.
wiredmikey writes "Author Robert Vamosi writes an interesting piece on how security researchers are using open source 'prototyping boards' and other open source tools now available via the Internet for rapid prototyping of tools used in hardware analysis. 'The days of saying it would take the resources of a nation-state to discover or exploit vulnerabilities in a particular piece of hardware in an industrial control system or a healthcare environment are rapidly fading,' he writes. Vendors who do not test their products before selling them into the field are doomed to be targets of future research and, perhaps, attacks."
PC Games (Games)

Future Ubisoft Games To Require Constant Internet Access 497

Posted by Soulskill from the this-will-go-over-well dept.
Following up on our discussion yesterday of annoying game distribution platforms, Ubisoft has announced the details of their Online Services Platform, which they will use to distribute and administer future PC game releases. The platform will require internet access in order to play installed games, saved games will be stored remotely, and the game you're playing will even pause and try to reconnect if your connection is lost during play. Quoting Rock, Paper, Shotgun: "This seems like such a bizarre, bewildering backward step. Of course we haven't experienced it yet, but based on Ubi’s own description of the system so many concerns arise. Yes, certainly, most people have the internet all the time on their PCs. But not all people. So already a percentage of the audience is lost. Then comes those who own gaming laptops, who now will not be able to play games on trains, buses, in the park, or anywhere they may not be able to find a WiFi connection (something that’s rarely free in the UK, of course – fancy paying the £10/hour in the airport to play your Ubisoft game?). Then there's the day your internet is down, and the engineers can’t come out to fix it until tomorrow. No game for you. Or any of the dozens of other situations when the internet is not available to a player. But further, there are people who do not wish to let a publisher know their private gaming habits. People who do not wish to report in to a company they’ve no affiliation with, nor accountability to, whenever they play a game they’ve legally bought. People who don’t want their save data stored remotely. This new system renders all customers beholden to Ubisoft in perpetuity whenever they buy their games."
Microsoft

Visual Studio 2010 Forces Tab Indenting 390

Posted by kdawson from the one-man's-readable dept.
An anonymous reader writes "For years, Microsoft has allowed Visual Studio users to define arbitrary tab widths, often to the dismay of those viewing the resultant code in other editors. With VS 2010, it appears that they have taken the next step of forcing tab width to be the same as the indent size in code. Two-space tabs anyone?"

Submission + - Music while programming 6

Submitted by BubbaDoom
BubbaDoom writes: In our cublicle-ville, we have programmers intermixed with accounting, customer support and marketing. As a programmer, it is our habit to put on our headphones and listen to our portable music players to drown out all of the noise from everyone else. The boss recently sent an email just to the programmers demanding that we do not use our music players at work because he thinks it distracts us from our jobs and causes us to make mistakes. Of course we've explained to him that the prattle from the other people is much much more distracting but he insists his policy is the right one. What is the /. community's experience with music at work for programmers?

Comment Re:Now to be fair (Score 1) 10

by FortKnox (#28529827) Attached to: My solution to the people bitching (again) about M$ vs MS
From what I understand the reason people get offended is that M$ implies there is something evil about making $$$.

I just get offended by people saying 'M$' because it paints the Linux community as a bunch of pimply-faced teenage dorks that think that calling Microsoft 'M$' is like the greatest insult in the world. I use Linux at work. It's a great developer platform. I use it t home for my server. Great at that, too. Just have a windows box for games. So you can call me a Linux geek... but I hate two things about the linux community:
Those that insult proprietary companies like a kid would
Those that insult others trying to learn Linux (if someone was to say "RTFM" to a newbie in real life, I'd kick him in the nards)

Comment Pull Out? (Score 1) 57

by FortKnox (#28270515) Attached to: 401k scam
Really? 401k is a retirement, long-term investment. The market goes up and down, so unless you plan on cashing out your 401k TODAY or next year, I say now is the time to put MORE into the 401k. It's the stock market! When it's low, put in more money, when it's high sell off!

Never ever ever react to a sudden change in the stock market on a long term investment, unless it's something like enron...

Comment Re:I'm in the crackberry camp (Score 1) 19

by FortKnox (#27906327) Attached to: iPhone 3G, Crackberry, or Android?
I'm in the iPhone camp and have both of these apps on my iPhone.

The only reason I'd flip to android is that I can write java apps to the android... if you want to write an app to your iPhone, its objective-C, which I know you probably prefer, Barbie, but I'm a java guy ;)
Another advantage of iPhone is maturity. The androids are still level 1.0. I like to wait for the next gen (which is why I have an iPhone 3G, and never had the original iPhone).

Comment Re:Is your boss related to your landlord? (Score 1) 36

by FortKnox (#27819563) Attached to: "Find someone else's bug or else I'll cut your pay 20%"
LOL! Love the subject, johndiii :D

As with everyone, I'm surprised you lasted this long. A threat to pay is a last resort, company will fall out from under you if you leave, kind of threat, or a threat to someone you want to quit so you don't have to go through any company policy severance...

If you are looking for a job in the states, let me know. My company always appreciates a good developer, and we do placement jobs if you don't want consulting.

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