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Comment So why is this relevant? (Score 1) 28

It's a silly remake of a silly game for silly people with more money than brains. Granted, this covers the majority of people, but it doesn't make it any less embarrassing for society. It's like the rise of Social Media to something akin to a real news source rather than a podium for people that would probably be better served by just shutting up. What about advertising? Why do we tolerate that? Because Stupid People(tm) actually respond to the ads. In the early days of the internet some moron though "Hey, I'll email a bunch of jerks about my product. If I get one new customer great!" Then all the other marketers looked at that and said "Shit that works! I don't have to pay much if anything, and put the burden of delivery squarely in the lap of the poor suckers that receive it! And those dumb bastids will fall for it!"

Yeah.. This is yet another "small insignificant" chapter in the downfall of society. We're too stupid to continue to exist.

Comment Re: An interesting take (Score 1) 75

by SComps (#64653260) Attached to: Mark Zuckerberg Imagines Content Creators Making AI Clones of Themselves

Why is Zuckerberg even relevant anymore? Does anyone really care about what he vomits in public? Even giving consideration to his weirdo predictions gives him credibility he doesn't deserve. You can't buy credibility. Just filter his name, and anything meta related. Uninstall every meta app, and in general ignore him like the typical village idiot.
United States

WSJ Says Gov't Money Injection Won't Help Broadband 647

Posted by timothy from the at-least-they-can-pay-with-free-money dept.
olddotter writes "According to the WSJ, The US government is about to spend $10 Billion to make little difference in US broadband services: 'More fundamentally, nothing in the legislation would address the key reason that the US lags so far behind other countries. This is that there is an effective broadband duopoly in the US, with most communities able to choose only between one cable company and one telecom carrier. It's this lack of competition, blessed by national, state and local politicians, that keeps prices up and services down.' Get ready for USDA certified Grade A broadband."
Communications

Mediterranean Undersea Cables Cut, Again 329

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the cut-me-twice-shame-on-you dept.
miller60 writes "Three undersea cables in the Mediterranean Sea have failed within minutes of each other in an incident that is eerily similar to a series of cable cuts in the region in early 2008. The cable cuts are already causing serious service problems in the Middle East and Asia. See coverage at the Internet Storm Center, Data Center Knowledge and Bloomberg. The February 2008 cable cuts triggered rampant speculation about sabotage, but were later attributed to ships that dropped anchor in the wrong place."
The Internet

Who Protects the Internet? 177

Posted by samzenpus from the guarding-the-tubes dept.
strikeleader writes "TechCrunch has an article from an interview with General Kevin Chilton, US STRATCOM commander and the head of all military cyber warfare. Who protects us? 'Basically no one. At most, a number of loose confederations of computer scientists and engineers who seek to devise better protocols and practices — unincorporated groups like the Internet Engineering Task Force and the North American Network Operators Group. But the fact remains that no one really owns security online, which leads to gated communities with firewalls — a highly unreliable and wasteful way to try to assure security.'"
Displays

The Pocket-Sized Projector Has Arrived 220

Posted by timothy from the wistful-longing-fills-my-chest-cavity dept.
mallumax writes "David Pogue of New York Times has reviewed the Pico, which is a pocket projector from Optoma. The review is quite entertaining (Pogue projects the images on to a plane's ceiling, leaving passengers baffled) and detailed. The highlights are: It is a pocket-sized projector which runs on batteries and can project images and videos from a variety of sources like iPhone, iPod and DVD players with a 480x320px resolution, with a maximum screen size of 65 inches at 8.5 feet. It uses a non-replaceable 10,000 hour LED lamp and a DLP chip from Texas Instruments. The battery lasts for 90 minutes and can be recharged through USB or with its own power cord. The device weighs 115g and comes with an inbuilt speaker which is practically useless. If you want one, it will set you back by $430."

Comment well, it's like this... (Score 2, Insightful) 238

by Mille Mots (#24672571) Attached to: States Throw Out Electronic Voting Machines

So seriously, can anyone tell me what is so hard about automating a paper process that has ticks in boxes?

The problem is not that making an automatic voting machine is difficult. It is not. Making one that is accurate, reliable, and secure is a problem. Even that, however, is not the biggest problem. Getting the voting public to accept the machines as accurate, reliable and secure is the real issue. Take the /. crowd as an example (please). How many posters here think that the existing Diebold machines are secure? Virtually none, because they have been shown to be wildly insecure and cracking them is trivial for anyone with a modicum of technical ability.

One solution to the perception problem would be for Diebold (or others) to open their engine to public scrutiny. Any weaknesses, short cuts or plain old fsck ups would be revealed and the systems could be modified and demonstrated to be secure. This would lead to warm, fuzzy feelings amongst the cognoscenti and they, in turn, would help spread the "these are trustworthy" word of faith among the great unwashed. Problem solved.

However, if you are Diebold and you open your engine for everyone to see, you have essentially given your competition an engraved invitation to eat your lunch. They point out all your flaws, provide an alternative that doesn't have them, everyone flocks to WeMakeVotingMachinesRight and now you, Mr. President and CEO of Diebold, are out of work because EBIT went down the tubes due to lack of confidence in your product. The BoD might say, "Yeah, that public comment about delivering the vote in Ohio for Bush? We can let that slide as long as you are delivering dividends and an ever increasing share price for us." Do something that causes earnings to slide, though, and you are toast.

So, in short, there is no technical reason the problem cannot be solved. There are, however, serious commercial interests preventing such a solution. By "serious commercial interests," of course, I really mean, "people interested primarily in protecting their positions and salaries." NTTAWWT.
Role Playing (Games)

Archiving the History of Virtual Worlds 127

Posted by CmdrTaco from the future-generations-deserve-my-avatar dept.
eldavojohn writes "Some members of the University of Texas are trying to create a repository to store the histories of online virtual worlds. They hope that game makers will take advantage of this repository as they define standards of how to save interactions not only between players and the virtual worlds but also other players. How many times have I destroyed you in a duel? Let's check the records!"
Networking

SF Not an Exception In Giving IT Too Much Control 245

Posted by timothy from the double-edged-sword dept.
CWmike writes "The city of San Francisco's IT department is certainly not the exception when it comes to allowing just one person to have unfettered rights to make password and configuration changes to networks and enterprise systems. In fact, it's a situation fairly common in many organizations — especially small to medium-size ones, IT managers and others cautioned in the wake of the recent Terry Childs incident."
The Courts

RIAA's Throwing In the Towel Covered a Sucker Punch 411

Posted by kdawson from the many-eyes dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA threw in the towel, all right, but was only doing it in preparation for throwing a sucker punch. After dropping its 'making available' case, Warner v. Cassin, before Judge Robinson could decide whether to dismiss or not, it was only trying to do an 'end run' (if I may mix my sports metaphors) around the judge's deciding the motion and freezing discovery. The RIAA immediately, and secretly, filed a new case against the family, calling this one 'Warner v. Does 1-4.' In their papers the lawyers 'forgot' to mention that the new case was related. As a result, Does 1-4 was assigned to another judge, who knew nothing about the old case. The RIAA lawyers also may have forgotten that they couldn't bring any more cases over this same claim, since they'd already dismissed it twice before. Not to worry, NYCL wrote letters to both judges, reminding them of what the RIAA lawyers had forgotten."
Microsoft

MS Clearflow To Help Drivers Avoid Traffic Jams 243

Posted by kdawson from the get-me-outa-this dept.
Pioneer Woman writes "Microsoft announced plans to introduce a Web-based service for driving directions that incorporates complex software models to help users avoid traffic jams. The system is intended to reflect the complex traffic interactions that occur as traffic backs up on freeways and spills over onto city streets and will be freely available as part of the company's Live.com site for 72 cities in the US. Microsoft researchers designed algorithms that modeled traffic behavior by collecting trip data from Microsoft employees who volunteered to carry GPS units in their cars. In the end they were able to build a model for predicting traffic based on four years of data, effectively creating individual 'personalities' for over 800,000 road segments in the Seattle region. In all the system tracks about 60 million road segments in the US."
Privacy

FBI Hid Patriot Act Abuses 243

Posted by Soulskill from the nothing-to-see-here dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Wired is reporting that the FBI hid Patriot Act abuses with retroactive and flawed subpoenas, and used them to illegally acquire phone and credit card records. There were at least 11 retroactive, 'blanket' subpoenas that were signed by top counter-terrorism officials, some of which sought information the FBI is not allowed to have. The FBI's Communication Analysis Unit also had secret contracts with AT&T, Verizon and MCI, and abused National Security Letters by issuing subpoenas based on fake emergencies."

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