Comment Very negative poll (Score 1) 248
X=4-7 == -3, Is everybody into selling camera's that they haven't received yet?
Comment Re:Holland? (Score 1) 139
And because there is no single province named "Holland" it is always obvious that when people refer to Holland they mean the whole county, not just a province.
Spammers Moving To Disposable Domains 147
Trailrunner7 writes "Spammers and the botnet operators they're allied with are continuing to adapt their techniques to evade security technologies, and now are using what amount to disposable domains for their activities. A new report shows that the spammers are buying dozens of domains at a time and moving from one to another as often as several times a day to prevent shutdowns. New research shows that the amount of time that a spammer uses a given domain is basically a day or less. The company looked at 60 days worth of data from their customers and found that more than 70 percent of the domains used by spammers are active for a day or less."
xkcd, Devotion To Duty 167
xkcd really hit the nail on the head today.
USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes 427
bizwriter writes "This may seem like a joke, but it's not. The US Patent and Trademark Office will not accept patent filings faxed in if they arrive upside down. That's right, the home of innovation of the federal government is incapable of rotating an incoming fax file, whether electronically or on paper."
Hand Written Clock 86
a3buster writes "This clock does not actually have a man inside, but a flatscreen that plays a 24-hour loop of this video by the artist watching his own clock somewhere and painstakingly erasing and re-writing each minute. This video was taken at Design Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach 2009."
Submission + - Iran Getting Better at Internet Filtering (technologyreview.com)
Al writes: "Rob Lemos reports that Iran's national ISPs seem to have recently gained the ability to filter large quantities of web traffic more effectively. Arbor Networks used data gathered from distributed network sensors to monitor the data going to Iran from the global Internet. The firm found that all of the country's providers showed an enormous drop in traffic following the contested June 12 election, then nearly normal traffic patterns until June 26. After that, five of six national ISPs showed an 80 percent drop in traffic for approximately three weeks. The one internal ISP that continues to see significant traffic during those three weeks counts many government ministries among its clientèle. The picture painted by the data is of an ISP that is becoming increasingly skilled in filtering, says Craig Labovitz, chief scientist for Arbor Networks."
Comment Re:in the scheme of things (Score 1) 480
Mod parent up.
How long did you wait for THAT to be on topic lol.
How long did you wait for THAT to be on topic lol.
Auto Safety Tech May Encourage Dangerous Driving 601
longacre writes "Modern highway planning schemes designed to make roads safer combined with the comfort and safety technology found in the modern automobile may actually be putting us in danger, according to a compelling piece in Popular Mechanics. Citing studies and anecdotal evidence, the article points out that a driver on a narrow mountain road will probably drive as if their life depends on it; but the same driver on an eight-lane freeway with gradual curves and little traffic may be lulled into speeding while chatting on his cellphone. Quoting: 'Modern cars are quiet, powerful and capable of astonishing grip in curves, even on wet pavement. That's swell, of course, until you suddenly lose traction at 75 mph. The sense of confidence bred by all this capability makes us feel safe, which causes us to drive faster than we probably should. We don't want to make cars with poor response, but perhaps we could design cues — steering-wheel vibration devices, as in video games? — that make us feel less safe at speed and encourage more care. ... In college I drove an Austin-Healey 3000 that somehow felt faster at 45 mph than my Mazda RX-8 (or even my Toyota Highlander Hybrid) feels at 75 mph. That was a good thing.'"
RIAA Argument About Streaming To Be Streamed 92
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "You may recall that in an RIAA case, SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum, the district court ruled that an oral argument about the constitutionality of statutory damages could be streamed, and the RIAA has been fighting that with a petition for 'mandamus or prohibition' in the appeals court, which is opposed by the press. Interestingly, it now turns out that the appeals court's oral argument about the streaming will itself be recorded and then streamed. It is hard to imagine how a court which routinely streams its own oral arguments can rule that it is somehow inappropriate for similar oral arguments in the district court to be streamed as well."
Comment How can you tell graphs without error-bars? (Score 1) 823
Looking at the AMST-E data it does seem to be warming up though.
For sure the lines in winter are pretty close, but if you look at the lines in August 2006 and 2007 show pretty deep dips.
If you look at the 'old' SSM/I data the same trend emerges.
If course graphs without error-bars are not to be trusted as people are wont to fixate on the exact numbers shown rather than the trend. Without error-bars you cannot even tell if the trend is real or due to sampling bias.
A nice way of doing error bars is used in the (our) national weather on TV.
Instead of showing a line to indicate the predicted rainfall, temp, etc.
They use a colored area with includes the line + error bars. Except almost none realise its error bars you're looking at. Neat.
For sure the lines in winter are pretty close, but if you look at the lines in August 2006 and 2007 show pretty deep dips.
If you look at the 'old' SSM/I data the same trend emerges.
If course graphs without error-bars are not to be trusted as people are wont to fixate on the exact numbers shown rather than the trend. Without error-bars you cannot even tell if the trend is real or due to sampling bias.
A nice way of doing error bars is used in the (our) national weather on TV.
Instead of showing a line to indicate the predicted rainfall, temp, etc.
They use a colored area with includes the line + error bars. Except almost none realise its error bars you're looking at. Neat.
Web Scam Bilks State of Utah Out of $2.5M 138
KitB sends in a story in the Salt Lake Tribune that tells of a Web-based scam, resembling some used by Nigerian gangs, that snared the state of Utah. $2.5M was sent to a bank account in Texas before the bank raised a question and then froze $1.8M in the account. "Thieves apparently used a Nigerian-based scam to steal $2.5 million from the Utah treasury, covering their tracks by using intermediaries and a church address. A Salt Lake Tribune review of the names listed in a search warrant as receiving or transferring money [found] names of African origin or connections to that continent. Michael Kessler, ... a forensic accounting [investigator] in New York City, said the thieves appear to have used a simple scam that originated in Nigeria about five years ago. The Utah theft is the first time he's seen a government victimized. 'Their IT people should have known better,' Kessler said after reviewing a copy of the search warrant Thursday. 'It sounds like any kid could have done this.'"
New Bill Would Repeal NIH Open Access Policy 223
pigah writes "The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act has been reintroduced into Congress. The bill will ban open access policies in federal agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH). These policies require scientists to provide public access to their work if it has been funded with money from an agency with an open access policy. Such policies ensure that the public has access to read the results of research that it has funded. It appears that Representative John Conyers (D-MI), the author of the bill, is doing the bidding of publishing companies who do not want to lose control of this valuable information that they sell for exorbitant fees thereby restricting access by the general public to an essentially public good."
Name and Shame Spam Senders With OpenBSD 166
Peter N. M. Hansteen writes "Once you've identified spam senders, OpenBSD provides all the tools you need to take one step further: exporting their addresses and publishing the evidence. You can even trap them yourself using known bad addresses. It's easy, fun and good netizenship."
Web Rescues Un-Aired Super Bowl Ads 286
destinyland writes "A pirated version of Budweiser's un-aired Super Bowl ad appeared on YouTube — proving the Web is more democratic than NBC. The sexy PETA ad they refused to air also turned up on PETA's site; YouTube also had Saturday's skit from SNL, mocking the actual Pepsi ad that would air Sunday. But ironically, the Web site for Jack in the Box crashed right after they'd aired their cliffhanger about Jack's bus accident, prompting one critic to joke, 'Should we assume he's dead?'
