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Comment Re:Maybe a BIT sensationalistic... (Score 1) 250

by starwed (#35944564) Attached to: Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

For some reason this topic has built up an epic level of FUD.

Their system was designed to be used in response to DMCA notices. Dropbox would get a takedown notice, they'd flag the file to be removed, and an e-mail would be sent to the uploader of the file informing them of the DMCA notice.

In this case, a dropbox guy used the tool without realising that the last step was automated. There was never any DMCA notice generated, just a DMCA notice notice.

Comment Good. (Score 1) 705

by starwed (#35799974) Attached to: Senator Wants to Tax Internet Shopping
As someone living in KY I *already* have to pay sales tax on Amazon purchases -- they have several warehouses here. If you're for the elimination of all sales tax, ok, that's a consistent POV. But I don't think there's any reason to treat internet sales any differently than in-store.
Communications

Mozilla Is Eyeing Your Phone 107

Posted by timothy from the convergence-cometh dept.
Slatterz writes "Mozilla is planning to develop a browser for mobile phones by 2010. Mitchell Baker, chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, has been laying out her plans for the organisation over the next two years. Baker also committed to expanding the role of Firefox and building on its market share, while developing new browser technology such as the Aurora project. Mozilla has already stated that it is working on a mobile version of Firefox, but has never set a timeframe for release."
Space

Vatican Says Alien Life Plausible 775

Posted by timothy from the well-that's-charitable-of-the-vatican dept.
An anonymous reader writes "According to BBC, the director of the Vatican Observatory stated in an article titled 'Aliens Are My Brother' that intelligent beings created by God could exist in outer space. 'The search for forms of extraterrestrial life does not contradict belief in God. — Just as there are multiple forms of life on earth, so there could exist intelligent beings in outer space created by God.' Mind that this is not the same director who said that evolution is more than a mere theory — that was Father Coyne. I myself agree. There might be intelligent beings created by God in outer space even if there are none here on earth."
Spam

The Russian Mafia Doesn't Like Spam Either 451

Posted by CowboyNeal from the think-twice-before-sending dept.
wattrlz writes "Apparently the current champion of v1*gr4 spamming solicited some of the wrong email boxes. Alexy Tolstokozhev was recently found murdered in his palatial spam-bought estate near Moscow. The implications of this hands on method of system administration are staggering." Update: 10/12 15:28 GMT by Z : Good story. Unfortunately, probably a fake.
Programming

Programmer's Language-Aware Spell Checker? 452

Posted by kdawson from the hands-off-my-camelcase dept.
Jerry Asher writes "Not all of my coworkers are careful about spelling errors. Sometimes this causes real embarrassment as spelling errors creep into software interfaces. Does anyone know of spell checkers for programming languages? I don't want a text spell checker, I want a programming-language-aware spell checker. A spell checker that I can pass all of my code through and will flag spelling errors in function names, variable names, and comments, but will ignore language keywords, language constructs and expressions, and various programming styles (camel code, or underscores, or...). I want a spell checker that knows that void *functionSigniture(char *myRoutine) contains one spelling error. Does anyone have such a thing for Java or C++? Are there any Eclipse plugins that do this?"
Math

Can Statistics Predict the Outcome of a War? 572

Posted by kdawson from the first-you-have-to-get-the-inputs-right dept.
StatisticallyDeadGuy writes "A University of Georgia scientist has developed a statistical system that can, she claims, predict the outcome of wars with an accuracy of 80 percent. Her approach, applied retrospectively, says the US chance of victory in the first Gulf War was 93%, while the poor Soviets only had a 7% chance in Afghanistan (if only they'd known; failure maybe triggered the collapse of the USSR). As for the current Iraq conflict: the US started off with a 70% chance of a successful regime change, which was duly achieved — but extending the mission past this to support a weak government has dropped the probability of ultimate success to 26%. Full elaboration of the forecasting methodology is laid out in a new paper (subscription required — link goes to the abstract). Some details can be gleaned from her 2006 draft (PDF)."

Cringely Posits Adobe's Purchase by Apple 245

Posted by Zonk from the now-what-is-he-talking-about dept.
An anonymous reader writes to mention another Robert Cringely piece discussing Apple's future. In his latest article, he lays out some goals for Apple on its quest to desktop dominance. An important link in this chain is Apple's purchase of Adobe Systems. From the article: "Adobe has already made one feint away from Mac development that required personal pressure from Steve Jobs on John Warnock to reverse. If Apple kinda-sorta embraces Windows enough for Adobe to question whether continued development for the native OS X platform is still warranted, well, then Apple WILL just become another Dell, which isn't what Steve Jobs wants. Steve wants Windows applications to run like crazy on his hybrid platform but to look like crap. In his heart of hearts, he'd still like to beat Microsoft on the merits, not just by leveraging some clever loophole. So he needs the top ISVs who are currently writing for OS X to continue writing for OS X, and that especially means Adobe."

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