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Comment This is been known for 20 years (Score 2) 125

Find a book called "Big Secrets". It's got recipes for coke, kfc, etc.and a whole chapter on polygraphy: the whole sordid story. I loaned it to a friend that was really worried about a mandatory polygraph for job. When the interview started _exactly_ as described in the book she almost broke out laughing. Aced the test, took the job.

Submission + - Smithsonian using Kickstart campaign to save Armstrong's moon suit (kickstarter.com)

qpgmr writes: The Smithsonian is appealing for assistance to raise enough money to preserve Neil Armstrong's moon suit.
...This suit has lunar dust embedded in the legs... moon dust..
The goal of the campaign is to conserve the suit so it can be placed on public display — if you care about the great adventure that took us to the moon and want to honor a brave man, make a contribution. You won't ever regret it.

Comment Re:Dear republican candidates (Score 2) 452

There was a similar flap years ago between Chrissie Hinds (of the Pretenders) and Rush Limbaugh, who was using her song "Back to Ohio" as his opening and bump music. Thing is, Limbaugh paid the ASCAP and other associated licensing fees, so Hinds was basically told to bugger off (numerous times, and publicly on his show). I think she tried to sue, but discovered that she really couldn't do a damned thing about it.

It was Chrissie Hynde's song with The Pretenders "My City Was Gone" that Limbaugh had been using without licensing or permission for several years. She demanded he stop, he did. She relented when he agreed to give PETA $100,000. Amazing: you managed to create four factual errors and three spelling errors in one post. You're ready to run in a republican primary.

Submission + - New research cracks AES keys 3-5x faster! (computerworld.com) 1

qpgmr writes: AES, generally thought to be the gold standard for encryption, is showing weaknesses:

From Computerworld: "Researchers from Microsoft and the Dutch Katholieke Universiteit Leuven have discovered a way to break the widely used Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), the encryption algorithm used to secure most all online transactions and wireless communications."

Link to paper: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/cryptanalysis/aesbc.pdf

Submission + - Cold Warriors Question Nukes (wordpress.com)

Martin Hellman writes: "George Shultz served as President Reagan's Secretary of State, and Bill Perry as President Clinton's Secretary of Defense. Henry Kissinger was National Security Advisor and Secretary of State to both President Nixon and Ford. Sam Nunn was Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee for eight years. Their key roles in the Cold War has led many to call them "½ÂoeCold Warriors." That status makes their recent, repeated calls for fundamentally re-examining our nuclear posture all the more noteworthy. Their most recent attempt to awaken society to the unacceptable risk posed by nuclear weapons is an OpEd in today's Wall Street Journal Deterrence in the Age of Nuclear Proliferation. (That link requires a subscription to the Journal. There is also a subscription-free link at the Nuclear Threat Initiative.) Key excerpts and links to other resources are available."
AI

Submission + - Can You Beat A Computer At Rock Paper Scissors? (tekgoblin.com) 1

tekgoblin writes: " It looks like the New York Times has created a game that uses artificial intelligence to outsmart you. It uses a simple game called Rock, Paper, Scissors which is pretty much known by everyone on the planet by now. The computer tries to mimic human reasoning by building on simple rules and statistical averages. So based on the rules of the game and your previous moves, the computer tries to make predictions on your next move. The game has 2 modes, the first being Novice where the computer learns the game from scratch, and veteran where the computer has experience of over 200,000 rounds of previous experience."
Technology

Submission + - Study Shows Technology Prevent us from Good Sleep (ispyce.com)

Anonymous Coward writes: "Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they're not getting enough sleep and late-night computer use, texting and video games are a significant part of the problem, according to a national survey released today. Virtually all of Americans surveyed in the Sleep in America poll reported "very active" use of technology at least a few nights a week within an hour of bed. It is clear that we have a lot more to learn about the appropriate use and design of this technology to complement good sleep habits," said David Cloud, CEO of the National Sleep Foundation, which conducted the survey."
Facebook

Submission + - Facebook may bust up the SMS profit cartel (cnn.com) 3

AndyAndyAndyAndy writes: " Fortune has a very interesting article today about wireless providers and their exorbitant profit margins for SMS handling, especially when looking at modern data plans.

'Under the cell phone industry's peculiar pricing system, downloading data to your smartphone is amazingly cheap — unless the data in question happens to be a text message. In that case the price of a download jumps roughly 50,000-fold, from just a few pennies per megabyte of data to a whopping $1000 or so per megabyte.'

A young little application called Beluga caught the attention of Facebook, which purchased the company yesterday.

The app aims to bring messaging under the umbrella of data plans, and features group messaging, picture and video messaging, and integration with other apps.

The author argues that, if successful, Beluga (or whatever Facebook ends up calling it) could potentially be the Skype/Vonage or Netflix-type competitor to the old-school cellular carriers and their steep pricing plans."

Firefox

Submission + - Firefox 4 RC Vs. IE9 RC: The First Duel (conceivablytech.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Firefox 4 vs. IE9 is going to be an epic battle in a reigniting browser war in which Microsoft wants its IE to be seen as a capable browser again. Mozilla struggled to keep the pace with Chrome and IE9, but is about to release the first release candidate, which is expected to be the final version of Firefox as well. This first review of JavaScript, Flash and HTML5 tests seems to indicate that both browsers are about even at the bottom line, while Firefox has the JavaScript edge and IE is ahead in HTML5 performance.
Education

Submission + - Schools consider searching pupils' smartphones (pcpro.co.uk) 1

An anonymous reader writes: What right to privacy do school pupils have on their mobile phones? Education officials are considering ways to clamp down on cyber-bullying and classroom disruption by allowing teachers to search and delete content from student handsets if it is deemed unsuitable. However, questions remain whether such a move would give teachers too much power and infringe on student rights.
Bug

Submission + - PHP floating point bug crashes servers (idg.com.au)

angry tapir writes: "A newly unearthed bug in certain versions of the PHP scripting language could crash servers when the software is given the task of converting a large floating point number, raising the possibility that the glitch could be exploited by hackers. The bug will cause the PHP processing software to enter an infinite loop when it tries to convert the series of digits "2.2250738585072011e-308" from the string format into the floating point format. The bug only seems to affect version 5.2 and 5.3 of the language."

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