Comment Re:Yet Another Reason (Score 1) 88
Please explain why you'd rather not reveal your referrer data. (New example from TFA aside.)
Maybe if you're embarassed because you still use Altavista search
Comment Re:Yet Another Reason (Score 1) 88
The HTTP referrer field may create privacy concerns for some people, but there are definite concrete benefits in web development to having data from this field available on an aggregate level. Examples:
- See the paths people take when browsing a site, and arrange/optimise the design accordingly (generaly to make browsing a site easier)
- See what search engine queries generally land a user at a page, so in the long run the content can be tailored towards what people are actually searching for
I don't think a war against the HTTP referrer field is really warranted, given the privacy implications are only relevant to particularly committed privacy fanatics.
- See the paths people take when browsing a site, and arrange/optimise the design accordingly (generaly to make browsing a site easier)
- See what search engine queries generally land a user at a page, so in the long run the content can be tailored towards what people are actually searching for
I don't think a war against the HTTP referrer field is really warranted, given the privacy implications are only relevant to particularly committed privacy fanatics.
Toward Autonomous Unmanned Aircraft Technology 137
coondoggie writes with a NetworkWorld piece that begins, "Researchers at Purdue will soon experiment with an unmanned aircraft that pretty much flies itself with little human intervention. The aircraft will use a combination of global-positioning system technology and a guidance system called AttoPilot ... to guide the aerial vehicle to predetermined points. Researchers can be stationed off-site to monitor the aircraft and control its movements remotely. AttoPilot was installed in the aircraft early this year, and testing will begin in the spring, researchers said."
Tech Publisher O'Reilly Slashes Jobs 207
An anonymous reader writes "According to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, geeky tech publisher O'Reilly Media has slashed 14% of its workforce, or 31 people. Founder and tech pundit Tim O'Reilly comments on the layoffs by exhorting people to 'get more with less.' According to the article, 'Just this week... both tech giant Google and book retailer Barnes & Noble announced their first layoffs ever. Other publishing houses, including HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Random House, and Simon & Schuster have frozen salaries or cut jobs, or both.'"
Chu's Final Breakthrough Before Taking Office 233
KentuckyFC writes "While preparing for the job of US Secretary of Energy in the incoming Obama administration (and being director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a Nobel Prize winner to boot), Steven Chu has somehow found time to make a major breakthrough in the world of atom interferometry. One measure of an interferometer's sensitivity is the area that its arms enclose. Chu and colleagues have found a way to increase this area by a factor of 2,500 by canceling out the noise introduced by lasers, which work as beam splitters sending atoms down different arms (abstract). One thing this makes possible is the use of different types of atoms in the same interferometer, allowing a new generation of tests of the equivalence principle. (This is the assumption that the m in F=ma and the m's in F= Gm1.m2/r^2 are the same thing). Let's hope he's got equally impressive breakthroughs planned for his encore as US Secretary of Energy."
A Step Toward an Invisibility Cloak 197
Technology Review has a writeup on the latest advance in the lab towards an invisibility cloak made of metamaterials, described this week in Science. We've been following this technology since the beginning. The breakthrough is software that lets researchers design materials that are both low-loss and wideband. "The cloak that the researchers built works with wavelengths of light ranging from about 1 to 18 gigahertz — a swath as broad as the visible spectrum. No one has yet made a cloaking device that works in the visible spectrum, and those metamaterials that have been fabricated tend to work only with narrow bands of light. But a cloak that made an object invisible to light of only one color would not be of much use. Similarly, a cloaking device can't afford to be lossy: if it lets just a little bit of light reflect off the object it's supposed to cloak, it's no longer effective. The cloak that Smith built is very low loss, successfully rerouting almost all the light that hits it."
The Best Robots of 2008 57
An anonymous reader writes "Robot innovation continued its relentless advances during 2008. SingularityHub has a showcase of the best robot videos of the past year. These robot videos are really amazing, and they show just how far we have come in the field of robotics in recent years."
The videos include toy robots, robot musicians (which we've discussed in the past), modular robots that work together to move around, robots doing synchronized martial arts, the BigDog robot that can walk on almost any type of terrain, and robot soccer. We've also recently talked about a couple of robots that will bring you beer.
Phishing For Bank Info Without Any Pesky Malware 232
Emb3rz writes "DarkReading.com brings us news of a new approach to phishing that targets online banking sites. Here's the novel part of it: it doesn't involve any of the typical attack vectors we all know and love. Instead, it uses JavaScript from a remote page to detect if you have a banking site open, and prompts you for info via popup if you do."
Comment Re:State of the Market (Score 2, Informative) 82
All I care about is best performance under 50W and under $100. Is there anything out there better than the 8600GT?
The Radeon HD 3870 is extremely similar in terms of price and performance. I guess it depends on what you can get the best deal on.
Comment State of the Market (Score 4, Informative) 82
- The current best performing single card is the GeForce GTX 295
- The best performance setup was (before this card) a tossup between dual GeForce GTX 295s (quad SLI) and three GeForce GTX 280s (three-way SLI).
- The overclocking potential of the GeForce GTX 285 & reduced power consumption might make a three-way 285 setup preferrable to a dual 295 setup (for enthusiasts)
- The best performance setup was (before this card) a tossup between dual GeForce GTX 295s (quad SLI) and three GeForce GTX 280s (three-way SLI).
- The overclocking potential of the GeForce GTX 285 & reduced power consumption might make a three-way 285 setup preferrable to a dual 295 setup (for enthusiasts)
Comment Re:It's a plot! (Score 4, Informative) 101
Where the hell is the IETF in all this, I want to know?
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-rpsec-bgpsecrec-10.txt
Abstract:
The security of BGP, the Border Gateway Protocol, is critical to the proper operation of large-scale internetworks, both public and private. While securing the information transmitted between two BGP speakers is a relatively easy technical matter, securing BGP, as a routing system, is more complex. This document describes a set of requirements for securing BGP and the routing information carried within BGP.
NVIDIA's 55nm GeForce GTX 285 Launched 82
Visceralini writes "NVIDIA is launching yet another high-end 3D graphics offering, an optimized version of their top shelf GeForce GTX 280 single GPU card, dubbed the GeForce GTX 285.
This new GeForce is a
55nm die-shrunk version of the legacy GTX 280 with lower power consumption characteristics that don't require an 8-pin PCI Express connector, rather just a pair of more standard 6-pin plugs.
Performance
metrics are shown here in a number of the latest game titles including
Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead, Far Cry 2 and Mirror's Edge. The new GTX 285 is
about on par or slightly faster than a GTX 280 but with
less power draw and some room for overclocking over the reference design."
Methane On Mars May Indicate Living Planet 200
Riding with Robots writes "NASA is announcing today that the definitive detection of methane in the Martian atmosphere means the planet is still alive, at least geologically, and perhaps even biologically. 'Methane is quickly destroyed in the Martian atmosphere in a variety of ways, so our discovery of substantial plumes of methane in the northern hemisphere of Mars indicates some ongoing process is releasing the gas,' said one agency scientist. The gas was detected with observations made over over several Martian years with NASA telescopes at Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Both biological and geological processes could explain the methane."
Breathalyzer Source Code Ruling Upheld 520
dfn_deux writes "In a follow up to a 2005 story where Florida judge Doug Henderson ruled that breathalyzer evidence in more than 100 drunk driving cases would be inadmissible as evidence at trial, the Second District Court of Appeal and Circuit Court has ruled on Tuesday to uphold the 2005 ruling requiring the manufacturer of the Intoxilyzer 5000, Kentucky-based CMI Inc, to release source code for their breathalyzer equipment to be examined by witnesses for the defense of those standing trial with breathalyzer test result being used as evidence against them. '"The defendant's right to a fair trial outweighed the manufacturer's claim of a trade secret," Henderson said Tuesday. In response to the ruling defense attorney, Mark Lipinski, who represents seven defendants challenging the source codes, said the state likely will be forced to reduce charges — or drop the cases entirely.' ... What this really means is that outside corporations cannot sell equipment to the state of Florida and expect to hide the workings of their machine by saying they are trade secret. It means the state has to give full disclosure concerning important and critical aspects of the case."
Wiretapping Program Ruled Legal 575
BuhDuh writes "The New York Times is carrying a story concerning that well known bastion of legal authority, the 'Foreign Intelligence Surveillance' court, which has ruled that the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program was perfectly legal. It says, 'A federal intelligence court, in a rare public opinion, is expected to issue a major ruling validating the power of the president and Congress to wiretap international phone calls and intercept e-mail messages without a court order, even when Americans' private communications may be involved, according to a person with knowledge of the opinion.'"
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