Comment America's fear comes from... (Score 0, Troll) 926
... Faux News
Submission + - Author Threatens to Sue Book Reviewers over Trademark Infringement (the-digital-reader.com)
Nate the greatest writes: Do you know what is crazier than sending DMCA notices to a site like Lendink which doesn't host any content? It's when an author threatens to sue book reviewers over trademarks. Jazan Wild, a comics creator, is sending out threatening emails to any and all book blogs who review a recently published book called Carnival of Souls. The book was written by Melissa Marr, and it happens to use a title which Jazan Wild owns the registered trademark. He's also suing the publisher for trademark infringement, but HarperCollins is laughing it off. The book blog Bookalicious posted the email they got from Jazan. Needless to say they did not take down the review.
Submission + - Magic: the Gathering is Turing complete (toothycat.net)
TsukiKage writes: A 50-card M:tG combo for four players is demonstrated that is used to construct a simple Turing machine, performing arbitrary computations just by following the rules of Magic and card text thereafter.
Submission + - Is a Computer Science Degree Worth Getting Anymore? (infoworld.com) 1
snydeq writes: "Self-taught technologists are almost always better hires than those with a bachelor's degree in computer science and a huge student loan, writes Andrew Oliver. 'A recruiter recently asked me why employers are so picky. I explained that of the people who earned a computer science degree, most don't know any theory and can't code. Instead, they succeed at putting things on their resume that match keywords. Plus, companies don't consider it their responsibility to provide training or mentoring. In fairness, that's because the scarcity of talent has created a mercenary culture: "Now that my employer paid me to learn a new skill, let me check to see if there's an ad for it on Dice or Craigslist with a higher rate of pay." When searching for talent, I've stopped relying on computer science degrees as an indicator of anything except a general interest in the field. Most schools suck at teaching theory and aren't great at Java instruction, either. Granted, they're not much better with any other language, but most of them teach Java.'"
Submission + - Exposing the Machinery of the Resistome (utexas.edu) 1
aarondubrow writes: 2011 Nobel Prize Winner, Bruce Beutler, is using the Ranger supercomputer at The University of Texas at Austin for an ambitious new project to discover all of the genes involved in the mammalian immune response – the so-called "resistome." Over several years, Beutler's lab will sequence the protein coding portions of genes in 8,000 mice to detect the impact of mutations on immunity. This means scanning, enriching and sequencing 500 billion base pairs every week. The project represents a "Big Data" problem of the highest order.
Submission + - Intel Unveils 10-watt Haswell Chip
adeelarshad82 writes: At IDF, Intel announced company's fourth-generation Core processor code-named Haswell. The chip is based off of the same 22nm process used in the current third-generation Core products. What makes this chip remarkably different from the third-generation chips is its ability to product twice the graphic capabilities at a much lower power consumption which Intel has acheived by making use of a number of tactics.
Submission + - Opus - the codec to end all codecs (xiph.org) 4
jmv writes: "It's official. The Opus audio codec is now standardized by the IETF as RFC 6716. Opus is the first state-of-the-art, fully Free and Open audio codec ratified by a major standards organization. Better, Opus covers basically the entire audio-coding application space and manages to be as good or better than existing proprietary codecs over this whole space. Opus is the result of a collaboration between Xiph.Org, Mozilla, Microsoft (yes!), Broadcom, Octasic, and Google. See the Mozilla announcement and the Xiph.Org press release for more details."
Submission + - Playing at the World: A Huge New History of Gaming (wired.com)
disconj writes: Over at Wired, Ethan Gilsdorf interviews Jon Peterson, author of the new book Playing at the World . Gilsdorf calls it 'a must read,' though he cautions it 'is not intended for a general audience. It’s a book for geeks, about geeks.' It is apparently an insanely-detailed history of role-playing games and wargames, including everything from Prussian kriegsspiel up to Dungeons & Dragons and the beginning of computer RPGs (but none of that heathen stuff after 1980). Peterson says in the interview that he wanted to write a history of these games 'worthy of the future they are creating.' He apparently spent five years on the project, including unearthing a huge trove of previously-unknown historical documents.
Submission + - China's Alibaba to Outsell Amazon, eBay Combined (reuters.com)
hackingbear writes: China's largest e-commerce firm, Alibaba Group, expects to sell merchandise this year worth more than that sold by Amazon Inc and eBay combined. The company is aiming for 3 trillion yuan ($473 billion) in annual transaction value from its Taobao e-commerce units in the next 5 to 7 years, rising from the 1 trillion yuan of sales expected for 2012. "From their annual reports we did a rough calculation and we were similar last year but we are growing faster than them this year, so this year we are probably larger than them," Zeng Ming, Chief Strategy Officer of Alibaba, said of Amazon and eBay.
Comment So, I can FINALLY buy ... (Score 1) 219
Submission + - How Windows FreeCell Gave Rise To Online Crowdsourcing (gameological.com)
TPIRman writes: In 1994, a physics doctoral student named Dave Ring assembled more than 100 math and puzzle enthusiasts on Usenet for what became one of the earliest online 'crowdsourcing' projects. Their goal: to determine if every hand in Windows' FreeCell solitaire game was in fact winnable, as the program's help file implied. Their efforts soon focused in on one incredibly stubborn hand: #11,982. They couldn't beat it, but in the process of trying, they proved the viability of an idea that would later be refined with crowdsourcing models like Amazon's Mechanical Turk.
Submission + - End of Windows XP support era signals beginning of security nightmare (networkworld.com) 1
colinneagle writes: Microsoft’s recent announcement that it will end support for the Windows XP operating system in two years signals the end of an era for the company, and potentially the beginning of a nightmare for everyone else.
When Microsoft cuts the chord on XP in two years it will effectively leave millions of existing Windows-based computers vulnerable to continued and undeterred cyberattacks, many of which hold the potential to find their way into consumer, enterprise and even industrial systems running the latest software.
Although most of the subsequent security issues appear to be at the consumer level, it may not be long until they find a way into corporate networks or industrial systems, Miller says.
Even scarier, Sarwate says many SCADA systems for industrial networks still run a modified version of XP, and are not in a position to upgrade. Because much of the software running on SCADA systems is not compatible with traditional Microsoft OS capabilities, an OS upgrade would entail much more work than it would for a home or corporate system.
When Microsoft cuts the chord on XP in two years it will effectively leave millions of existing Windows-based computers vulnerable to continued and undeterred cyberattacks, many of which hold the potential to find their way into consumer, enterprise and even industrial systems running the latest software.
Although most of the subsequent security issues appear to be at the consumer level, it may not be long until they find a way into corporate networks or industrial systems, Miller says.
Even scarier, Sarwate says many SCADA systems for industrial networks still run a modified version of XP, and are not in a position to upgrade. Because much of the software running on SCADA systems is not compatible with traditional Microsoft OS capabilities, an OS upgrade would entail much more work than it would for a home or corporate system.
Submission + - Need to Find a Hackerspace in Africa? Look on This Map (vice.com)
pigrabbitbear writes: "These days you can crowd-map about anything from Hurricane Irene to what you eat for breakfast as long as you either have a phone or a basic internet hook-up. One of the largest and most used platforms for crowd-sourced mapping is Ushahidi (Swahili for ‘witness’), an open-sourced platform has been used for tracking and mobilizing movement around more serious topics. Ushahidi was used in developing Syria Tracker, a crowd-sourcing of reported deaths in the conflict in Syria. Now the Ushahidi platform is putting technology hubs in Africa on the map. Literally.
The map, simply named Tech Hubs in Africa, was launched by Bongohive, a self described non-profit technology and innovation hub located in Lasaka, Zambia for one purpose: To have likeminded organizations across Africa—notorious for low levels of tech infrastructure—begin plotting the locations of tech hubs available around the continent right now."
The map, simply named Tech Hubs in Africa, was launched by Bongohive, a self described non-profit technology and innovation hub located in Lasaka, Zambia for one purpose: To have likeminded organizations across Africa—notorious for low levels of tech infrastructure—begin plotting the locations of tech hubs available around the continent right now."
Submission + - Vatican Attack Provides Insight into Anonymous
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "John Markoff writes that an unsuccessful campaign against the Vatican by Anonymous, which did not receive wide attention at the time, provides a rare glimpse into the recruiting, reconnaissance, and warfare tactics used by the shadowy hacking collective and may be the first end-to-end record of a full Anonymous attack. The attack, called Operation Pharisee in a reference to the sect that Jesus called hypocrites, was initially organized by hackers in South America and Mexico and was designed to disrupt Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Madrid in August 2011 for World Youth Day and draw attention to child sexual abuse by priests. First the hackers spent weeks spreading their message through their own website and social sites like Twitter and Flickr calling on volunteers to download free attack software and imploring them to “stop child abuse” by joining the cause. It took the hackers 18 days to recruit enough people, then a core group of roughly a dozen skilled hackers spent three days poking around the church’s World Youth Day site looking for common security holes that could let them inside. In this case, the scanning software failed to turn up any gaps so the hackers turned to a brute-force approach of a distributed denial-of-service, On the first day, the denial-of-service attack resulted in 28 times the normal traffic to the church site, rising to 34 times the next day but did not crash the site. “Anonymous is a handful of geniuses surrounded by a legion of idiots,” says Cole Stryker, an author who has researched the movement. “You have four or five guys who really know what they’re doing and are able to pull off some of the more serious hacks, and then thousands of people spreading the word, or turning their computers over to participate in a DDoS attack.”"
Submission + - The Demise of Kodak: Five Reasons (wsj.com)
pbahra writes: "Kodak’s declaration of bankruptcy earlier this month closed a glorious chapter in the history of photography. With the introduction of the first automatic snapshot camera more than 110 years ago, Kodak transformed photography from an alchemy-like activity dominated by professionals into a hugely popular one that became an integral part of people’s lives. Photography had been mostly confined to professionals who took formal portraits in studios. Kodak got photography out of studios and into family life. Understanding how it did this is vital to grasping the reasons for its failure. Thus, when digital technology arrived in the photographic industry, Kodak inhabited a world that was largely its own creation. There was no one more steeped in it than Kodak. This became obvious to me when I spent a day with Kodak’s top management in their Rochester headquarters in the U.S. about 11 years ago. But by the end of the day, I was convinced that this company was not going to be around much longer. Here are the top five reasons for Kodak’s demise:"
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Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurence of the improbable. - H. L. Mencken
