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Comment Hooray, nit-picking! (Score 1) 322

by xarium (#33392166) Attached to: Everything You Need To Know About USB 3.0

...difference between GB and Gb.

Let's pretend for a moment that the suffix was correctly capitalised. Was that so hard? But you feel it necessary to write personal insults because of a misused "shift"? Wow. Definitely appropriate reaction.

[RE: 5 wires]... Mini-USB

Yes, that would be a plug, note I said "wires". That 5th pin (if it's present at all) is always connected to ground in reality and never appears as a wire. It's the one whose role is being replaced by a protocol change in USB 3.0 because nobody ever implemented it. The cable itself always has 4 wires.

[RE: disingenuous]... perhaps you don't understand the word?

The author knows a reasonable amount about Intel involvement, including their presence in the USB working group. Despite knowing this, you are of the opinion that the author genuinely avoided learning that Intel were the originators?
Disingenuous: Adjective: Not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does.
 Still seems applicable.

I am quite confident you'll reply again and am looking forward to reading it. I promise I'll make an effort to check back too, though I have a tendency to lose interest with those who can't tell the difference between wit and Tourette's Syndrome.

Comment Lots of problems with that article (Score 1) 322

by xarium (#33391138) Attached to: Everything You Need To Know About USB 3.0

Claims of 5GB/s aren't even backed by the USB working group which says 3.2GB/s will realistically be the upper limit.

All existing cable and plug combinations remain backwards compatible, but the article claims otherwise, there are only some introduced permutations that won't work.

And when did USB 2.0 become 5 wires?

The author attacks Intel about foot-dragging on the USB 3.0 spec rather disingenously since it was Intel that lead the charge on USB 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0. It was their technology originally.

But what can one expect from a technology website that censors the word 'assuming' (comes out as ***uming, I shit you not!).
Crime

9 MA Cyberbullies Indicted For Causing Suicide 709

Posted by Soulskill from the this-is-why-you-don't-listen-to-the-internet dept.
Raul654 writes "Massachusetts teenager Phoebe Prince committed suicide on January 14. After her death, it was revealed that she had been the target of cyberbullying for months (and that her teachers were aware of it and did nothing). Today, nine of her classmates were indicted on charges including harassment, stalking, civil rights violations, and statutory rape. Prince's suicide echoes the earlier case of Megan Meier, who committed suicide after being cyberbullied by a classmate's mother."

Comment Escalation of certainty (Score 1) 336

by xarium (#31563570) Attached to: Carbon-14 Dating Reveals 5% of Vintage Wines May Be Frauds

"The team of researchers think "vintage fraud" is widespread..."

Eh, "think"?
But the headline sounds so certain.

"According to the study, wine experts have estimated that up to 5% of fine wines sold today are not all they are cracked up to be..."

Ah. "estimated". Nowhere do they even mention running the tests in anger. Only proving the tests work when calibrated to known values.

The reporter left it till the end to admit, and /. reports it as an absolute truth. Disingenuous at best.
The Military

What Happens In Vegas Happens In Afghanistan 522

Posted by timothy from the far-from-the-madding-crowd dept.
theodp writes "After the morning commute from his Las Vegas apartment, Air Force captain Sam Nelson sits in a padded chair inside a low, tan building in Nevada, controlling a heavily armed drone aircraft soaring over Afghanistan, prepared to kill another human being 7,500 miles away if necessary. Welcome to the surreal world of drone pilots, who have a front-row seat on war from half a world away. 'On the drive out here, you get yourself ready to enter the compartment of your life that is flying combat,' explained retired Col. Chris Chambliss. 'And on the drive home, you get ready for that part of your life that's going to be the soccer game.' No wonder why the Air Force is interested in the Xbox LIVE crowd and the Army's opened a new arcade recruitment center!"
Image

New Medical Disorder Linked To Gaming 224

Posted by samzenpus from the a-bad-case-of-tetris-eye dept.
oldspewey writes "A new skin disorder caused by use of games consoles has been identified by skin specialists. The condition, dubbed "PlayStation palmar hidradenitis", is described in the British Journal of Dermatology. Researchers outline the case of a 12-year-old girl who attended a Swiss hospital with intensely painful sores on the palms of her hands. The girl, who had been using a games console regularly, recovered fully after 10 days of abstinence. The doctors suspect that the problem was caused by tight and continuous grasping of the console's hand-grips, and repeated pushing of the buttons, alongside sweating caused by the tension of the game. Nina Goad, of the British Association of Dermatologists said: 'This is an interesting discovery and one that the researchers are keen to share ... If you're worried about soreness on your hands when playing a games console, it might be sensible to give your hands a break from time to time, and don't play excessively if your hands are prone to sweating.'" We called it Tekken thumb.
Unix

February 13th, UNIX Time Will Reach 1234567890 376

Posted by timothy from the less-often-than-a-stopped-clock-is-right dept.
mikesd81 writes "Over at Linux Magazine Online, Jon maddog Hall writes that on Friday the 13th, 2009 at 11:31:30pm UTC UNIX time will reach 1,234,567,890. This will be Friday, February 13th at 1831 and 30 seconds EST. Matias Palomec has a perl script you an use to see what time that will be for you: perl -e 'print scalar localtime(1234567890),"\n";' Now, while this is not the UNIX epoch, Alan Cox does assure us that Linux is now working on 64-bit time, and the UNIX epoch 'roll-over' would happen about the time that the sun burnt out."
Censorship

Australian Judge Rules Simpsons Cartoon Rip-off Is Child Porn 612

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-we-can-all-rest..-hey-wait dept.
An anonymous reader was one of several to note a bizarre story in which an Australian judge ruled that drawings can be child porn. In this case, it was knock off drawings of the Simpsons doing naughty things. Good thing they're going to be censoring the Down Undernet soon. Who knows what damage this could cause.

Comment It's no longer the lesser of evils (Score 1) 199

by xarium (#25812161) Attached to: It's Official, Australia Needs a Space Agency

Thank you. The Sex Party appear to be taking up the slack that the other parties are inexplicably leaving.

Labor and Liberal both have their fingers firmly up their bums. Recently the Greens withdrew their preference vote for Labor as a show of no-confidence - I believe Labor lost every seat that Greens withdrew their preference on. It seems the torch may soon pass to a new top-dog party if Labor and Liberal continue to become more similar (and, ironically, less liberal).

The Sex Party seem to believe that education is the key to most problems (and taboos). I agree. Hopefully a lot of others do too.
It's funny. Laugh.

Line Forms At Apple's Always-Open Manhattan Cube 445

Posted by timothy from the they-serve-the-best-anticipation-ice-cream-here dept.
SpectreBlofeld writes "According to EngadgetMobile, a line has formed in front of Apple's flagship Cube store in Manhattan. From the article: 'So word on the street (literally) is that a large number of people are queuing in line outside of Apple's flagship store on 5th Avenue in New York City — keep in mind the Cube is open 24 hours a day. Our intrepid girl-on-the-scene reports that the group is more than 60-deep, though most people seem confused about what they're waiting for, but some believe they're actually camping out for a 3G iPhone.' Prank, or mass hysteria?" I wonder if the crowd already has its own Flickr group set up -- if not, what are they waiting for on that front?
Security

UK Banking Law Blames Customers For Insecure OS 430

Posted by Zonk from the laws-with-no-cause dept.
twitter writes "If you use an insecure OS in the UK and someone drains your bank account, the banks say it's your fault. The Register reports: 'The Banking Code produced by the British Bankers' Association (BBA), and followed by most banks, makes it clear that banks will not be responsible for losses on online bank accounts if consumers do not have up to date anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall software installed on their machines.'" twitter went on to note that the majority of consumer PCs use an operating system with a history of security issues. Should end users be ultimately responsible for the state of their systems?
Hardware

Graphene May be the New Silicon 115

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the bouncing-off-walls dept.
esocid writes to share that University of Maryland physicists have demonstrated that the material of the future may be graphene rather than silicon. Electricity conduction through graphene is about 100 times greater than that of silicon and could offer many improvements to things like computer chips and biochemical sensors. "Graphene, a single-atom-thick sheet of graphite, is a new material which combines aspects of semiconductors and metals. [...] A team of researchers led by physics professor Michael S. Fuhrer of the university's Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials, and the Maryland NanoCenter said the findings are the first measurement of the effect of thermal vibrations on the conduction of electrons in graphene, and show that thermal vibrations have an extraordinarily small effect on the electrons in graphene."
The Media

The Net's Effect on Journalism 149

Posted by Zonk from the no-not-that-way-the-other-way dept.
An Associated Press article about the impact of the internet on journalism has a few interesting findings. A few years ago, it was expected that the internet would democratize news coverage. While print media is being rapidly reborn online, web-based news appears to be constraining the number of conversations instead of expanding them. "The news agenda actually seems to be narrowing, with many Web sites primarily packaging news that is produced elsewhere, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual State of the News Media report. Two stories - the war in Iraq and the 2008 presidential election campaign - represented more than a quarter of the stories in newspapers, on television and online last year, the project found. Take away Iraq, Iran and Pakistan, and news from all of the other countries in the world combined filled up less than 6 percent of the American news hole, the project said."

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