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Comment Re:Begs the questions... (Score 2) 148

by king_grumpy (#41226729) Attached to: Australian Attorney General Pushes Ahead With Gov't Web Snooping
The last election was extremely close and current government only got into power by making deals with independent and green (earth first not alien) politicians. Personally, I think it was the lack of a decent choice that lead to such a close vote. Neither party had any stand out policies or direction.

Comment Re:Solar (Score 2) 184

by king_grumpy (#41040811) Attached to: How To Line a Thermonuclear Reactor

But that's not going to happen because of the politics of shrill earth-firsters and others who don't understand nuclear and who think that every nuclear plant is Fukushima or Chernobyl.

Ensuring that greed doesn't ruin the planet for my grandkids is what keeps me wary of a nuclear answer for our energy needs. I'm sure there are safe ways to store waste so that in 100 years it hasn't leaked and trashed the environment. I'm also sure these ways cost more money than something that barely does the job but keeps the company profits growing year on year and allows the executives to pocket huge bonuses.

Comment Re:All for competitions (Score 1) 75

by king_grumpy (#39649795) Attached to: Expect a Flood of Competitions As US Tries To Spur Public Inventions

Patents are a non-issue unless you plan on commercializing a solution, and if that is the case, you (or the government) could license what is needed.

How do you find out which patents you've touched upon without paying for lawyers? How do you find the money to license said patents before you've made any money from your product?
Facebook

Submission + - Here's What Facebook Sends The Cops In Response To A Subpoena

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook already shares its Law Enforcement Guidelines publicly, but we’ve never actually seen the data Menlo Park sends over to the cops when it gets a formal subpoena for your profile information. Now we know. This appears to be the first time we get to see what a Facebook account report looks like.

The document was released by the The Boston Phoenix as part of a lengthy feature titled "Hunting the Craigslist Killer," which describes how an online investigation helped officials track down Philip Markoff. The man committed suicide, which meant the police didn’t care if the Facebook document was published elsewhere, after robbing two women and murdering a third.
Games

Submission + - Ten Computer Games Which Defined RPGs In The 1980s

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: 1980s' were huge for RPGs. This genre was one of the most defining game forms in the computer gaming world. A recently pubished article strolls down the memory lane to look back at ten classic computer games that both defined and extended the definition of the RPG in the 1980s. The roundup includes some obvious ones like Ultima and The Bard's Tale, and others which you may never have heard of.
Japan

Submission + - Nuclear Disaster in Japan Was Avoidable

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Martin Fackler writes that Japan’s nuclear regulators say that the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and 45-foot tsunami that knocked out cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant were far larger than anything that scientists had predicted, but some insiders from Japan’s tightly knit nuclear industry have stepped forward to say that Tepco and regulators had for years ignored warnings of the possibility of a larger-than-expected tsunami in northeastern Japan, and thus failed to take adequate countermeasures, such as raising wave walls or placing backup generators on higher ground. “March 11 exposed the true nature of Japan’s postwar system, that it is led by bureaucrats who stand on the side of industry, not the people,” says Shigeaki Koga, a former director of industrial policy at the Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry. Eight years ago, as a member of an influential cabinet office committee on offshore earthquakes in northeastern Japan, Kunihiko Shimazaki, professor emeritus of seismology at the University of Tokyo, warned that Fukushima’s coast was vulnerable to tsunamis more than twice as tall as the forecasts of up to 17 feet put forth by regulators and Tepco but government bureaucrats running the committee moved quickly to exclude his views from debate as too speculative and “pending further research.” Then in 2008, Tepco's own engineers made three separate sets of calculations that showed that Fukushima Daiichi could be hit by tsunamis as high as 50 feet. “They completely ignored me in order to save Tepco money," says Shimazaki."
Programming

Submission + - Stroustrup Reveals What's New in C++ 11 (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "Bjarne Stroustrup discusses the latest version of C++, which, although not a major overhaul, offers many small upgrades to appeal to different areas of development. From the interview: 'I like the way move semantics will simplify the way we return large data structures from functions and improve the performance of standard-library types, such as string and vector. People in high-performance areas will appreciate the massive increase in the power of constant expressions (constexpr). Users of the standard library (and some GUI libraries) will probably find lambda expressions the most prominent feature. Everybody will use smaller new features, such as auto (deduce a variables type from its initializer) and the range-for loop, to simplify code.'"
Facebook

Submission + - Facebook Has 25 People Dedicated to Handling Gov Info Requests (forbes.com)

Submitted by nonprofiteer
nonprofiteer writes: A profile of Facebook's CSO reveals that his 70-person security team includes 25 people dedicated solely to handling information requests from law enforcement. They get thousands of calls and e-mails from authorities each week, though Facebook requires police to get a warrant for anything beyond a subscriber's name, email and IP address. CSO Joe Sullivan says that some gov agency tried to push Facebook to start collecting more information about their users for the benefit of authorities:

"Recently a government agency wanted us to start logging information we don’t log. We told them we wouldn’t start logging that piece of data because we don’t need it to provide a good product. We talked to our general counsel. The law is not black-and-white. That agency thinks they can compel us to. We told them to go to court. They haven’t done that yet.”
Science

Submission + - Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Update: Still Hope for Warp-Drive Fans? (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: The CERN particle physics laboratory in Geneva has confirmed Wednesday's report that a loose fiber-optic cable may be behind measurements that seemed to show neutrinos outpacing the speed of light. But the lab also says another glitch could have caused the experiment to underestimate the particles' speed. The other effect concerns an oscillator that gives its readings time stamps synchronized to GPS signals. Researchers think correcting for an error in this device would actually increase the anomaly in neutrino velocity, making the particles even speedier than the earlier measurements seemed to show.

Submission + - N. Korea's High-Tech Counterfeits (yahoo.com) 2

Submitted by ESRB
ESRB writes: N. Korea is apparently able to produce high-quality counterfeits of US dollars--specifically $100 and $50 bills. It's suspected that they possess similar printing technologies as the US and buy ink from the same Swedish firm. The article also advocates a move to all digital payment/transfers by pointing out both forms are only representations of value and noting it would cripple criminal operations such as drug cartels, human traffickers, and so forth.
Blackberry

Submission + - RIM Trying to Woo Customers With Porn, Gambling Apps? (cio.com)

Submitted by
AZA43
AZA43 writes: "Everybody knows that BlackBerry-maker RIM is hurting these days. But is it hurting enough to try to attract new customers with the promise of porn and/or gambling apps? A new rating system added to RIM's BlackBerry App World store suggests that it just may be that desperate. The new "Adult" rating covers, "graphic sexual content, graphic nudity," " graphic violence," and gambling apps "as permitted by law." And that suggests RIM will allow this kind of content into App World, in stark contrast to Apple's no-porn-on-the-iPhone stand."

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